"In 1905 Admiral Togo, the brilliant C-in-C of the Japanese navy, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima. In 1944, in the climax of the naval war in the Pacific, the American Pacific Fleet broke the back of the Japanese navy at Leyte Gulf. The years from 1905 to 1944 saw the supremacy at sea of the surface battle fleet. In the First World War, the battleship and the battle-cruiser, with their protecting screens of cruisers, destroyers and torpedo-boats, held the key to naval strategy. In the Second World War, the aircraft carrier came into its own, cruelly revealing the helplessness of the great capital ships against determined attack from the air.

In Sea Battles of the 20th Century, George Bruce covers eight crucial naval engagements from Tsushima to Leyte Gulf. They include Jutland, in which the Grand Fleet, under Jellicoe, let slip the chance to deal a decisive blow against the German High Seas Fleet; Coral Sea, the first of the great carrier battles in the Pacific; and Guadalcanal, which over a period of several months saw a series of savage long- and short-range engagements and the final passing of the centuries-old line-of-battle tactics.

In addition there are seven supplementary picture spreads, which cover such episodes as the escape of the Goeben and the Bres-lau, the hunting of the raider Emden, the Battle of the River Plate, and the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.

180 illustrations"

The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. 1975. Englanninkielinen. Kovakantinen.

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