Occurring on 13 January 1942, this was a British seizure of Axis shipping in Santa Isabel harbour on the neutral Spanish island of Fernando Pó (now Bioko in Equatorial Guinea) in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa. The operation was undertaken by the Special Operations Executive’s ‘Maid Honor’ Force, so-named for …
Category Archives: Naval operations
Warships that never were – the British ‘Lion’ class
The ‘Lion’ class was to have comprised six battleships, and was designed for the Royal Navy in the late 1930s as what was in essence a larger and improved version of the ‘King George V’ class battleship with 16-in (406-mm) guns. The class design changed several times in response to the removal of treaty restrictions …
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The German ‘H-39’ Class Battleship
When the ‘Z-Plan’ was authorised by Adolf Hitler on 18 January 1939 for the upgrade of the German Navy on the basis that World War II would not be triggered until 1942, its heavyweight core was six ‘H’ class battleships. In its initial form, the new type of battleship was to be of the ‘H-39’ …
Amphibious Warfare – Salvage & Repair Craft
By its very nature, amphibious warfare presents the men and equipment involved not just with the hazards of any military undertaking, but also with the possibility of destruction or damage as a result of the particular nature of the operation milieu. The most obvious problem faced by landing craft is that of becoming stranded as …
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Amphibious Warfare – The Landing Vehicle Tracked (I)
Widely known as the amphtrack and amtrak (or amtrac), the LVT (Landing Vehicle Tracked) was a type of vehicle optimised for the amphibious warfare role, and was a small amphibious landing craft used initially by the US Navy, US Marine Corps and US Army during World War II. The vehicle was initially intended to carry …
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Amphibious Warfare – The DUKW Amphibious Truck
World War II revealed, to an extent hitherto unconsidered and in any event unobtainable by the technology of the period, the very clear advantage of being able to carry men, light weapons and many types of equipment and supplies straight from the landing craft, either beached or lying just offshore, across the assault beach to …
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Amphibious Warfare – The Tank Landing Ship (III)
For a transoceanic passage, the LST Mk 2 could carry one landing landing craft (LCT Mk 5 or LCT Mk 6) for side-launching, and this was a feature which was sometimes also used for the carriage of LCTs to the vicinity of an amphibious assault. In LST beaching operations, a satisfactory manner to bridge the …
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Amphibious Warfare – The Tank Landing Ship (II)
When the LST Mk I was being designed, the concept of distant raiding still featured strongly in British minds and thus influenced the design, but by the winter of 1941 the distant raiding concept had been largely replaced by a fear of invasion. At their first meeting at the Atlantic conference in Argentia, Newfoundland, during …
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Amphibious Warfare – The Tank Landing Ship
The Tank Landing Ship, or more properly, the Landing Ship, Tank (LST), is the type of vessel created in World War II to support amphibious operations with the carriage of vehicles (most especially armoured vehicles), cargo and troops to be landed directly onto an unimproved shore. The British ‘Dynamo’ evacuation from Dunkirk in June 1940 …
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Amphibious Warfare – The Dock Landing Ship
A dock landing ship (often formally designated as a landing ship, dock, or LSD) is an amphibious warfare ship incorporating a docking well into the stern for the accommodation, transport, and launch/recovery of landing craft and amphibious vehicles. Some ships with docking wells, such as those of the Soviet/Russian ‘Ivan Rogov’ class, also have bow …
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