1. Munich 1938
Munich 1938 reconstructs the diplomatic crisis over Czechoslovakia in the days when Europe appeared close to another general war. David Boyle follows Adolf Hitler’s demands for the Sudetenland, Neville Chamberlain’s repeated journeys to meet him, French uncertainty under Édouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini’s role in the…
2. Dunkirk
David Boyle gives a day-by-day account of the crisis that trapped the British Expeditionary Force and Allied troops around Dunkirk in May and June 1940. The narrative combines the fighting retreat and defensive perimeter with the naval organisation of Operation Dynamo, the use of destroyers and…
3. Operation Primrose
Operation Primrose follows the capture of German submarine U-110 in May 1941, when a British boarding party seized an intact naval Enigma machine and crucial code material before the submarine sank. Boyle explains how the intelligence windfall fitted into the wider cryptographic struggle between the Royal…
4. Lost at Sea
In July 1945 the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis completed a secret mission delivering components connected with the atomic bomb to Tinian. On its subsequent voyage the ship was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58, commanded by Mochitsura Hashimoto, and sank within minutes. Hundreds of survivors entered…