Ken Ford Boeken

The Anglo-American battle for the Geilenkirchen salient in November 1944 was infantry warfare at its worst, and it is described in vivid detail in this new edition of Ken Ford's classic study. The onset of winter saw the Allied advance from the Normandy beaches forced to a halt on Germany's doorstep. The clock had been put back to the days of the Great War - the Allies had arrived at the Siegfried Line and were forced to attack the fortifications from the hell of the trenches. Geilenkirchen was the first battle on German soil to be fought by the British since Minden in 1759. For them, it was just one more battle on the way to Berlin, but for the American 84th Division, it was a first faltering step into war and a bitter lesson in the attrition and savagery of combat. The story is told by the men who were there - the British, the Americans, and the Germans who were fighting desperately for their homeland. Neither side was victorious - both lost more men than they could afford and paid a heavy price in young lives for a few miles of ground.

The assault crossing of the River Seine by the British 43rd (Wessex) Division in August 1944 remains one of the most important operations of the closing stages of the Second World War. Once the obstacle of the great river had been overcome, General Horrocks unleashed the armor of XXX Corps on their historic dash across northern France and Belgium.

In the final instalment in Osprey's trilogy on Operation Market-Garden, this is a fascinating account of the British XXX Corps assault towards the Rhine at Arnhem.

Tells the story of Operation Neptune was, of course, more than just a tale of planning, building and logistics.

The raid on Dieppe in August 1942 was one of the most controversial episodes of World War II. This study of the event explores the many lessons learned by all concerned, and how this led to a change of tactics and contributed to the success of the D-Day landings. schovat popis

Known as the last great 'stand-up fight' of the Second World War the battle for the Rhineland was brutal in the extreme. Eisenhower's 'broad front' policy called for the whole of the Rhineland to be taken before pushing his troops across the Rhine and into Germany itself. The Germans opened the Roer dams in a vain bid to temper this massive Allied offensive and this called for a drastic change in tactics. The ensuing battle was characterised by amphibious assaults on the fortified villages of the flooded Rhine lowlands, frontal assaults on the much vaunted Siegfried Line and the grim fighting for the Reichswald Forest. It was to be 'the last great killing ground in the west'.

In the darkest days of World War II, the British planned a daring airborne operation to capture the secret of the German radar. Lead by Major John Frost, a company of paratroopers dropped into Bruneval on the French coast, and quickly neutralized a small German garrison. This book tells the story of one of the greatest raids of World War II.

In February 1942, three of the major ships of the German surface fleet - the battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen - stormed out of the harbour at Brest on a dramatic voyage back to Germany. Passing through the straights of Dover, the ships faced everything the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy could throw at them. In a dramatic running fight, the ships managed to sail right under the nose of history's greatest maritime nation to reach the safety of Germany. The brilliantly executed operation brought great humiliation to the British - Hitler, who had developed the plan, had judged perfectly the reaction of the British command to the Channel Dash. Repositioned, these fast, heavily armed ships went on to threaten the Allied Arctic convoys that kept Russia in the war at Stalingrad. This book tells the complete story of this great race, from the planning through to the repercussions of this unique Germany victory.

The third title in Osprey's survey of the D-Day landings of World War II (1939-1945). At 0016hrs on 6 June 1944 a Horsa glider ground to a halt a mere 60 yards from the Orne Canal bridge at Bénouville in Normandy. A small group of British paratroopers burst from it and stormed the bridge within minutes. The Allied liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe had begun. Within a few hours landing craft would swarm towards Ouistreham as British 3rd Division stormed ashore at Sword Beach. The battle would then begin to break through to relieve the paratroopers. In the third of the D-Day volumes Ken Ford details the assault by British 6th Airborne Division and the British landings on Sword Beach that secured the vital left flank of the invasion.

'The last great heave of war,' according to Churchill, took place with the crossing of the Rhine in 1945. No invading army had crossed this great river since Napoleon's in 1805, and the task fell to Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Opposing them were the forces of a failing fascist regime, including battalions of old men and boys, strengthened by several formations of crack troops, including paratroopers and Panzer Grenadiers.This book details the devastating Anglo-American assault from Arnhem during World War II (1939-1945), starting with the battle of Arnhem, and leading on to the successful crossing of the Rhine and eventual breakout, and continuing with the advance across northern Germany. Including comprehensive details on all aspects of the operation, including the amphibious assault, airborne landings, special forces' attack and armored land battle, this book charts the history of the last great set-piece battle of the war, second in magnitude only to the Normandy invasion, that ultimately brought the defeat of Hitler's Nazi regime one step closer.