Armed Forces

Forged in Fire takes us inside the secretive world of the Australian commandos.

The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland....

‘Stop screaming, I'm scared too!' is not what you'd expect to see on the back of a loadmaster's helmet in a Chinook helicopter flying over southern Afghanistan, but for Rod Henderson it sums up his 22 years of service as a soldier in the Australian Army.

Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in 2003, the SAS launched one of the most intense and secretive operations in its history: Task Force Black.

An enthralling and meticulously researched book, Crossing the Line tells the untold story of how a small group of brave soldiers and two determined reporters exposed one of the greatest military scandals in Australian history....

No one is born a leader. But through sheer determination and by confronting life’s challenges, Ant Middleton has come to know the meaning of true leadership....

Authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions....

Submarines and the sailors who serve in them have been and remain the tip of the spear of Australia's defences. For the first time, this is their unique story.

Mosul details the rise of ISIS influence in Australia, the Iran and Australia allegiance to fight Daesh and shows what led up to the battle and the ramifications that are still being felt at home - by our soldiers and the victims of that war....

The shocking story of the case against Australia's most highly decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG, and the defamation trial of the century....

This unique, gripping memoir is essential listening for anyone interested in the Special Forces and how they operate....

The inside story of the most expensive and controversial military program in history, as told by those who lived it....

In the predawn hours of March 4, 2002, just below the 10,000-foot peak of a mountain in eastern Afghanistan, a fierce battle raged. Outnumbered by Al Qaeda fighters, Air Force Combat Controller John Chapman and a handful of SEALs struggled to take the summit....

In the inspiring tradition of Black Hawk Down, this is the riveting real-life story of how an Australian SAS signalman's courage under fire saved more than 80 lives....

The definitive account of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, by best-selling author of Kokoda....

Way of the Reaper is a step-by-step accounting of how a sniper works, through the lens of Irving's 10 most significant kills - none of which have been told before....

In early 1943 Britain was engaged in an epic struggle for survival. As the deadly wolf packs of German U-boats roamed the Atlantic, supply lines and shipping losses fell victim to the carnage....

They began operations out of England in the spring of '43. They flew their Flying Fortresses almost daily against strategic targets in Europe in the name of freedom....

Groundbreaking, thrilling and revealing, The Reaper is the astonishing memoir of Special Operations Direct Action Sniper Nicholas Irving, the 3rd Ranger Battalion's deadliest sniper with 33 confirmed kills, though his remarkable career total, including probables, is unknown....

As a commander of Delta Force - the most elite counter terrorist organization in the world - Pete Blaber took part in some of the most dangerous, controversial, and significant military and political events of our time....

Panama, 1989. The once warm relationship between United States and Gen. Manuel Noriega has eroded dangerously. Newly elected President George Bush has declared the strongman a drug trafficker and a rigger of elections.

Men in the furnace of adversity… Step into the extraordinary life of Jake Harper-Ronald, a man whose childhood dream of becoming a soldier led him on an unparalleled journey.

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the Australian government sent five destroyers to beef up the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean....

Airlifted into the heart of the Sierra Leone jungle in the midst of the bloody civil war in 2000, 26 elite operators from the secret British elite unit X Platoon were sent into combat against thousands of Sierra Leonean rebels....

This riveting chronicle of submarine warfare is the first to cover all the major submarine campaigns of the war, describing, in detail, the operations of the British, American, Japanese, Italian, and German submarine and anti-submarine forces....

When the cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar escaped his lavish, custom built prison in Colombia, the fallout drove the nation to the brink of chaos. In Killing Pablo, acclaimed journalist Mark Bowden tells the story of the US military’s fifteen-month mission to find him. Drawing on unprecedented access to the soldiers, field agents, and officials involved in the chase, as well as hundreds of pages of top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar’s intercepted phone conversations, Bowden creates a narrative that reads as if it were torn from the pages of a Tom Clancy thriller.

In January 1951, Lieutenant Evgeniy Borisov was sent to the headquarters of the Soviet 5th Army in Spassk-Dalnii, a small city in the Russian Far East. Borisov was there on a secret mission. Together with his superior, Major Rusinov, his job was to establish the 91st Special Forces Company. The 91st was to be one of forty-six similar units spread out across the Soviet Union. The new forces were called "spetsnaz"—short for spetsnialnoe naznachenie, which translates to "special purpose."

Many aspire to serve with the Special Air Service, arguably the world's most prestigious regiment, but few achieve their aim. In this inspiring memoir veteran Tony Shaw recounts how he left school without any qualifications and embarked on a 30 year career much of it spent in Hereford, including four years in 'The Regiment'. Against the odds he rose through the ranks before being commissioned and eventually retiring as a Major. A brilliant and important account of one man's unique career which provides a fascinating insight into elite special forces soldiering.

For six years, Britain and Nazi Germany fought a bitter battle for control of the Atlantic. Allied offensives against Hitler's armies on the continent were conditioned by their bases on the British Isles, which made air strikes and landings possible. But during 1939, the Germans began to ‘starve’ the British into surrender by cutting off vital supplies of food and equipment from the Allies. This was done with the help of U-boats that tried to sink more cargo ships than the shipyards could produce - even when these actions were suicidal.

The P-38 Lightning was one of the fastest operational fighters of World War II, famous for its successes in North Africa and the Pacific. In The P-38 Lightning and the Men Who Flew It, Wolfgang W. E. Samuel shares the stories of the young men who climbed into the cockpits of the P-38 to fight for freedom, and of those who created, tested, and deployed these fearsome machines. The P-38 was the product of the Lockheed Corporation, the first fighter they ever built, principally conceptualized by Kelly Johnson, whose design was to meet Air Corps specifications. But it was no easy plane to fly.

This is the lively account of the hair-raising experiences of the men who have probed by sea and air into the inner mysteries of the world’s most terrible storms.

The US Army Guerrilla Warfare Handbook is an essential military manual that provides a comprehensive overview of unconventional warfare tactics used by guerrilla fighters. Based on official U.S. Army field manuals, this book explores the principles of irregular warfare, including ambushes, raids, sabotage, intelligence gathering, and psychological operations.

The last battle of World War II was not for military victory but for the technology of the Third Reich. In American Raiders, Wolfgang Samuel assembles from official Air Force records and survivors' interviews the largely untold stories of the disarmament of the Luftwaffe and of Operation Lusty—the hunt for Nazi technologies.

John Humphreys was just a boy soldier in the Royal Engineers when war was declared in 1939. By the war's end he had jumped into Arnhem with the Parachute Regiment to spearhead the attack on the bridge. For days Humphreys and the rest of his squad held on, outnumbered and outgunned by the German army fighting to the last bullet and refusing to surrender. But the Bridge Too Far is only the climax of Humphreys’ remarkable war. Twice captured as a prisoner of war, he twice escaped from the enemy to make his way back to Allied lines in order to rejoin the fight.

Fight for the Final Frontier uses the concepts associated with irregular warfare to offer new insights for understanding the nature of strategic competition in space. Today's most pressing security concerns are best considered using an irregular warfare lens because incidents and points of potential conflict fall outside the definition of armed conflict. While some universal rules of combat apply across all domains, conflict in space up-ends those assumed standards of understanding.