In the early hours of 15 May 1982, three Sea King helicopters carrying 42 men of 22 SAS Regiment and attachments, lifted off from the carrier HMS Hermes and headed towards the remote Pebble Island on the north coast of West Falkland.
Philip Reed, best known for his superb models of ships from the age of sail, here turns his attention to the other highly popular subject for ship modelers - the warships of the Second World War.
Very Special Ships is the first full-length book about the six Abdiel-class fast minelayers, the fastest and most versatile ships to serve in the Royal Navy in the Second World War.
Submarine' is almost certainly the first book to bring together eye-witness accounts from almost every navy that deployed submarines in WW2, and it is far more than an account of WW2 missions.
The covert, clandestine operations of the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS), from the jungles of Malaya, Borneo and Brunei to the deserts and mountains of the Middle East have always been the focus of intense fascination, stoked by the regiment's 'closed' organization and secretive activities.
Despite a supreme belief in itself, the Royal Navy of the early eighteenth century was becoming over-confident and outdated, and it had more than its share of disasters and miscarriages including the devastating sickness in Admiral Hosier’s fleet in 1727; failure at Cartagena, and an embarrassing action off Toulon in 1744\.
