Featured battle : Rietfontein

Part of The 2nd Boer War (or Three Years War)

Date : 24 October 1899

An inconclusive action, with Gen White engaging Boer forces in order to cover Brig. Gen Yule's retreat on Ladysmith. British artillery and accurate Boer rifles forced a stalemate but enough time had been gained for the retreat. Both sides claimed the day.

British Submarines in Two World Wars

Norman Friedman
This book was a real eye opener for me. I thought I knew quite a lot about submarines but my knowledge paled into insignificance when found the wealth of information before me. Here is a book that tells you all you need to know about submarines. One could probably build a period submarine with little more than the plans and descriptions here laid out. But the book is more than a technical manual. The thinking and attitudes which under pinned the planning and the execution of the Royal Navy’s submarine strategy are well described. The inter-war years are particularly fascinating in this respect. The vessels themselves and the thinking behind them range from the actual through the practical and onto the weird and wonderful. Many things caught my eye and imagination among which were beam firing torpedoes, a large submarine cruiser mounting 6 x 6” guns, some very strange and ugly hull forms, and an aircraft carrying submarine which was built but never went into service. There is also a special mention for the only action in which a submarine has torpedoed another while both were submerged.
This is a large book, 295 mm by 250 mm portrait with 429 pages. There are many photographs, about one per page in total, all appropriately annotated. There are many reproductions of technical drawings from the National Maritime Museum and numerous superb John Lambert drawings. There are also two three page and one four page spread of whole ship drawings from the NMM. It is clearly the product of a massive amount of research written up in a very readable style. However I would caution against cover-to-cover reading unless you can absorb facts at a very high rate. There is no dross, ‘all meat and no gravy’ as my grandfather would say.
This is a rather special book and we highly recommend it.

Seaforth Publishing, 2019