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Royal Navy Grand Fleet 1914–18
Britain’s last supreme naval fleet
Series: Fleet
Brief Description
World War I was Britain’s last moment as the world’s naval superpower, and its Grand Fleet was the most powerful ever seen. Fully illustrated, this explores its fighting power. At the start of World War I, the Royal Navy’s forces were amalgamated into a single entity,...
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Royal Navy Grand Fleet 1914–18
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See moreWorld War I was Britain's last moment as the world's naval superpower, and its Grand Fleet was then the most powerful ever seen. Fully illustrated, this explores its fighting power.
World War I was Britain’s last moment as the world’s naval superpower, and its Grand Fleet was then the most powerful ever seen. Fully illustrated, this explores its fighting power.
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Description
World War I was Britain’s last moment as the world’s naval superpower, and its Grand Fleet was the most powerful ever seen. Fully illustrated, this explores its fighting power.
At the start of World War I, the Royal Navy’s forces were amalgamated into a single entity, the Grand Fleet, and stationed in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The Grand Fleet was the largest amalgamation of modern naval power the world had seen, with over 30 dreadnought battleships or battlecruisers, and a plethora of cruisers and destroyers. In 1917, it was reinforced further by a powerful American squadron.
In Royal Navy Grand Fleet 1914–18, based on extensive primary source research, naval expert Angus Konstam assesses the Grand Fleet’s ships, technology, organisation, command, and intelligence, and how it fought. While ship-for-ship its German counterparts were better designed, as a combined fleet Admiral Jellicoe’s armada was unstoppable. It took part in several clashes with its German foe during the war, but it was only at the Battle of Jutland, in 1916, that Jellicoe finally had the chance to destroy the enemy.
Although the High Seas Fleet deftly avoided the trap laid for it, the Grand Fleet's economic blockade then really began to bite, leading to Germany’s surrender in November 1918. Packed with battle diagrams, spectacular artwork, and archive photos, this book is an essential guide to the last time the Royal Navy would be indisputably the world’s most powerful.
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781472866837
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 27 February 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Osprey Publishing
Illustration: Illustrated throughout with 35 archive photos and 13 pages of original colour illustrations
Contributors:
- Illustrated by Edouard A. Groult
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 6.0mm
Width: 184.0mm
Height: 248.0mm
Weight: 260g
Pages: 80
About the Author
Angus Konstam hails from the Orkney Islands, and is the author of over 100 history books, 60 of which are published by Osprey. This acclaimed author has written widely on naval history, most recently The Pirate Menace. A former naval officer and museum professional, he worked as the Curator in both the Royal Armouries, Tower of London and the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida. He now works as a full-time author and historian, and lives in Orkney, Scotland.
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