Terry C Treadwell

The Imperial Japanese Navy developed the submarine faster than any other country in the world. But because of rivalries between the two military hierarchies, the Army and the Navy, they never utilized the submarine to its full extent. Nevertheless, during World War II, Japan deployed a number of unique submarines. These included the Type B1 which carried a Yokosuka E14Y1 reconnaissance seaplane in a watertight capsule attached to the deck of the submarine. One of these aircraft carried out two bomb attacks on a forest in Oregon by dropping six incendiary bombs, taking the war to the American mainland. The use of aircraft from submarines as scout planes proved not to be as successful as hoped, mainly because of the difficulty after launching the aircraft of it finding the submarine again in the vast Pacific and Indian Oceans. The Japanese also developed the giant I-400 class of aircraft carrier submarines, that could launch three Seiran attack floatplanes. There were other notable actions involving IJN submarines. This included I-17 that attempted to shell, unsuccessfully, an oil refinery off the coast of Santa Barbara, causing a major panic along the West Coast of America. Also memorable are the midget submarines that attempted to attack Pearl Harbor, and the one-man human torpedo submarines (Kaiten). The submarine losses suffered by the Japanese Navy as the war progressed, when Allied, and in particular U.S. destroyers and aircraft hunted them down are all recorded in this comprehensive account of a fascinating element of the war at sea.

The ‘Wild West’, or American Frontier as it is also known, developed in the years following the American Civil War. However, this period of myth-making cowboys, infamous gunslingers, not always law-abiding lawmen, and saloon madams, is as much the product of fiction writers and film makers as reality.The outlaw came into his, or indeed her, own in the mid to late 19th century. Some of these individuals, men such as Billy the Kid, William Clarke Quantrill, Butch Cassidy or Harry Longabaugh, better known as the Sundance Kid, became household names. Many of those who roamed America’s West in the period between 1850 and 1900 often appear as colourful, romanticised, legendary characters. This includes the likes of Frank and Jesse James, who had stepped outside the law due to the harshness of life after the Civil War or under circumstances beyond their control.The majority of outlaws, though, were anonymous common criminals. In 1877, for example, the State Adjutant General of Texas, published ‘wanted posters’ for some 5,000 outlaws and bandits in the Rio Grande district alone, almost all of whom have since vanished into the mists of time.When it comes to the Wild West, it is important to separate fact from fiction. Of the known recorded killings by the various outlaws and gunfighters, Billy the Kid killed four men, not the twenty that some writers attributed to him. A notorious gunslinger, John Wesley Hardin was said to have killed twenty-seven men, but was only charged with one murder. Wild Bill Hickok killed three men, two of them in Abilene whilst he was City Marshal, and one in Springfield, Missouri, for which he was tried and found not guilty. Clay Allison, however, was thought to have killed at least fifteen men in his time as a gunfighter, whilst some of the outlaw gangs, such as the Rufus Buck Gang and the Evans Gang, were particularly violent and ruthless.The days of the outlaws of the Wild West gradually came to an end at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. The legends, however, live on.

The development of rocket and jet aircraft by the Germans before and during the Second World War is something that intrigues all those interested in the history of aviation. The first trials of the V1 (Doodlebug) were carried out with a pilot at the controls, on occasion the world-famous aviatrix Hannah Reitsch. The first encounter with a jet aircraft by Allied airmen is documented here, including the first shooting down of a jet aircraft by an Allied pilot.Rocket and Jet Aircraft of the Third Reich documents the huge problems faced by the German scientists, designers and engineers, and the pressures put upon them by the German High Command. At the end of the war the Americans and Russians struggled to get their hands on these experts and their data whilst the SS were trying to prevent them falling into Allied hands. Heinkel, Henschel, Junkers – and of course Messerschmitt — all feature, amongst other pioneering designers, alongside legendary pilots such as Adolf Galland and Walter Nowotny.