Osprey Publishing Ltd

Although the Russian Imperial Army Air Service consisted of no more than four BAGs (Boevaya Aviatsionniy Gruppa - battle aviation groups), each controlling three or four smaller AOIs (Aviatsionniy Otryad Istrebitelei - fighter aviation detachments) equipped with a variety of aircraft types, its fighter pilots nevertheless gave a good account of...

During the glory years of blitzkrieg the PzKpfw III was the only weapon in the German tank arsenal that really counted. Like Napoleon's vieux moustaches, it did not merely witness history in the making -- it made it, from the Channel to the Volga, and from the Arctic to the North African desert. It was the PzKpfw III that brought Hitler to the...

The Islamic world drew upon a myriad of pre-existing styles of fortification, taking Romano-Byzantine, Indian and Chinese ideas to create a highly effective and sophisticated hybrid fortification that was both new and distinctive. .,." In this book, author David Nicholle covers the methods of construction as well as the major parts of [the]...

Named after Klimenti Voroshilov, the People?s Commissar for Defence, the KVs proved a nasty surprise for German tank crews during the early days of Operation Barbarossa. Although slow, they were extremely heavily armoured. This volume examines the transition from multi-turreted tanks to heavy single-turret vehicles, consisting of the KV-1 and 2,...

Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union, commenced on 22 June 1941. It became the biggest conflict in military history, with some three million German troops and about 900,000 allies facing almost 4.7 million Soviet troops. The effects would colour postwar European history for the next 50 years. This title examines the history of the...

On 1 September 1939, when Germany attacked Poland, the Wehrmacht numbered 3,180,000 men. It eventually expanded to 9,500,000, and on 8-9 May 1945, the date of its unconditional surrender on the Western and Eastern Fronts, it still numbered 7,800,000. The Blitzkrieg period, from 1 September 1939 to 25 June 1940, was 10 months of almost total triumph...