This collection of 51 essays provides a history of amphibious landings that include European, Asian, and American operations. It describes in detail some of history's most significant amphibious assaults, as well as planned attacks that were never carried out.

Conventional military wisdom holds that the amphibious assault against a defended beach is the most difficult of all military operations--yet modern amphibious landings have been almost universally successful. This apparent contradiction is fully explored in this first look at 20th-century amphibious warfare from the perspective of the defender. The author, Col. Theodore L. Gatchel, USMC (Ret.), examines amphibious operations from Gallipoli to the Falkland Islands to determine why the defenders were unable to prevent the attackers from landing or to throw them back into the sea after they had fought their way ashore. He places the reader in the defenders' shoes as such epic battles as Normandy, Iwo Jima, and Inchon are planned and fought, and then uses these cases to explain why the defenders were unable to successfully defend against enemy landings. A practitioner, teacher, and student of amphibious warfare, Colonel Gatchel follows those explanations with speculations on how a defender today might try to stop a landing and on the implications of such actions for future amphibious operations.

Leading international military and academic experts analyse 37 amphibious operations from the 'how not to do it' catastrophe of Gallipoli in 1915, through the Second World War, Vietnam and the Falklands, to the Al Faw landings in Iraq in 2003. German, Japanese and Soviet operations are included.

Nimble Books has published several public domain reprints of books on mine warfare that have sold surprisingly well over the years, probably because mine warfare is an effective mode of combat that has been persistently under-resourced and under-studied by Big Navy. In recent years the Navy and the Marine Corps seem to have abandoned the idea of ever risking a large-scale amphibious assault opposed by precision-guided missiles, but that does not mean mine warfare is no longer relevant to the expeditionary community. The new Navy/Marine doctrines for war in the Pacific still envisage many troop-bearing transits through contested and quite possibly mined waters, and the ""pacing threat"" of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would almost certainly involve a large amphibious assault where US mines might play an important role. This document is a thesis that examines the effects of sea mining on amphibious warfare. It includes case studies of amphibious assaults conducted at Gallipoli, Normandy, Wonsan, and the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm. The study analyzes the forces involved, the mining conducted, and the impact of mining and mine countermeasures on the achievement of surprise in the assault. The study concludes that force levels are crucial for the success of amphibious assaults, with adequate force levels leading to successful operations. It also emphasizes the importance of rapid and complete mine countermeasures to achieve surprise in amphibious assaults. The document provides historical context, discusses the strategic and operational considerations of amphibious warfare, and highlights the significance of mine warfare in amphibious operations. This annotated edition illustrates the capabilities of the AI Lab for Book-Lovers to add context and ease-of-use to manuscripts. It includes five types of abstracts, building from simplest to more complex: TLDR (one word), ELI5, TLDR (vanilla), Scientific Style, and Action Items; three essays to increase viewpoint diversity: Grounds for Dissent, Red Team Critique, and MAGA Perspective; and Notable Passages and Nutshell Summaries for each page.

“An easily accessible short history” of offensive military operations on hostile shores from the authors of First to Fight: The U.S. Marines in World War I (Midwest Book Review). One of the most difficult types of warfare to master, landing on a hostile beach requires scrupulous planning and intense coordination between the air, sea, and land forces. With a history reaching back to the Persians landing on the Greek shores at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, it was the First World War that marked the beginning of modern amphibious warfare, with the Royal Marines combining their efforts with the Royal Navy. Despite the disastrous Gallipoli amphibious operation to seize the Dardanelles Straits in 1915, the Royal Navy and US Marine Corps continued to develop new landing crafts through the interwar years. The Second World War proved more successful for amphibious warfare, with the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941 crushing the American forces defending the Pacific islands and the D-Day landings by the Allied troops in 1944 initiating the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. This accessible short history looks at the historical development of amphibious warfare, telling the stories of particular landings and the units that have taken part in this unique type of warfare. The Royal Marines and US Marine Corps continue to evolve and play a crucial role in defense today, with specialized amphibious warfare ships being deployed to enable elite forces to respond promptly to threats across the globe. “A brief but very useful overview of an important aspect of modern warfare.” —Baird Maritime

The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898–1945 examines how the United States became a military superpower through the use of amphibious operations. While other major world powers pursued and embraced different weapons and technologies to create different means of waging war, the United States was one of the few countries that spent decades training, developing, and employing amphibious warfare to pursue its national interests.Commonly seen as dangerous and costly, amphibious warfare was carefully modernized, refined, and promoted within American political and military circles for years by a small motley group of military mavericks, intellectuals, innovators, and crackpots. This generational cast of underdogs and unlikely heroes were able to do the impossible by predicting and convincing America’s leadership how the United States should fight World War II.David Nasca reveals that despite the new ways that states have to project military power today as seen with airpower, nuclear weapons, cyber warfare, and special operators, amphibious warfare has proven to be the most important element in transforming the theater of battle. In understanding how amphibious warfare allowed the United States to achieve geopolitical supremacy, competitor states are now looking at America’s amphibious past for clues in how to challenge the United States’ global leadership and expand its power and influence in the world.

This volume reconceptualizes amphibious warfare and also fills an important gap in its historiography, examining how it was conceived, practised and employed, from the Crusades, through the first wave of European exploration and colonization, the Price Revolution and the European wars of religion, up to the early Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of a new wave of imperialism. Essays examine issues related to strategy, operational art, tactics, logistics and military technology, but also consider commerce and culture. They reveal that amphibious warfare was often waged for economic reasons and was the quintessential warfare of European imperialism, for sea power was required to deliver and sustain land power. The volume is lavishly illustrated with 30 plates and twelve maps. Contributors: Matthew Bennett; Louis Sicking; Malyn Newitt; Jan Glete; John F. Guilmartin; R. B. Wernham; Mark Charles Fissel; Guy Rowlands; John Stapleton; David J.B. Trim.