The Ship Killers

Small boats have been a threat to major navies from ancient times up to the Ukrainian mass suicide drone boat attacks against the Russian Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol in October 2022. The torpedo boat, a fast craft armed with a propelled high explosive warhead, was used to hold enemy navies at risk from the days of the American Civil War until it was supplanted by the missile boat during the Cold War era. These vessels exerted a powerful hold on the imagination, and for good reason: small crews, standing on deck, lightly protected if at all, dashing at high speed through heavy fire towards huge warships: what could be bolder, or braver?

This omnibus edition brings together for the first time the eleven volumes and 794 color pages of the late Joe Hind's magisterial history of the torpedo boat, which covers every phase of torpedo boat development from medieval times to the end of WW2 for every navy in all the world's oceans. Meticulously researched and illustrated with more than a thousand footnotes and nearly 500 color images, THE SHIP KILLERS provides a detailed and carefully verified daily timeline of every noteworthy torpedo boat activity during its period of coverage.

This edition includes illustrated timelines from 1280 to 1945 plus five special articles, twenty-two appendices, and twelve specialized indexes.