Product details
- ISBN 9781472872777
- Dimensions: 184 x 248mm
- Publication Date: 17 Dec 2026
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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In World War II, the Royal Navy fought a dashing, dangerous war to defend the last miles of British waters. Fully illustrated, this studies Coastal Forces in the toughest years of the war.
At the start of the war, the Royal Navy possessed a handful of small, fast, experimental motor torpedo boats (MTBs). There was no command structure, and no plans for their use. But with the fall of France in 1940, the Kriegsmarine’s experienced force of fast, light coastal craft could now be deployed just across the English Channel. A counter was needed.
In this book, naval historian Angus Konstam traces the rapid development of Coastal Forces in home waters. By late 1942 it had expanded to a force of almost 10,000 officers and men and some 300 vessels, including destroyers and fast motor gunboats. Initially their main role was the defence of British coastal convoys, but during 1941 they increasingly went on the offensive across the North Sea and English Channel, culminating in the MTBs' February 1942 attack on Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the ‘Channel Dash’ – suicidal, but it captured the public imagination. The following month Coastal Forces’ participation in the Saint-Nazaire raid was much more successful, but equally high-risk.
Packed with illustrations, this study tells the dramatic story of the creation of Coastal Forces, and outlines its expansion and combat during the early years of the war.
Angus Konstam is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has written widely on naval history, with well over a hundred books in print. He is a former Royal Navy officer, maritime archaeologist and museum curator, who has worked in the Royal Armouries, Tower of London, and Mel Fisher Maritime Museum. Now a full-time author and historian, he lives in Orkney.
Jim Laurier is a renowned illustrator of naval and aviation history.
