USS Astoria was a cruiser of the New Orleansclass, built at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington.Her keel was laid down on September 1, 1930. She was launched on December 16, 1933, and commissioned in the US Navy on April 28, 1934.

As late as the first half of the 1930s, the innovations which led the shift from the biplane to the monoplane airplane designs reached the aeronautical industry in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, traditionally considered secondrate compared to those of the major European powers. By then, the Vazduhoplovstvo vojske Kraljevine Jugoslavije (VVKJ Royal Yugoslav Air Force) was hopelessly outdated. The core of its arsenal consisted of obsolete biplanes, including the Breguet 19 light bombers, Potez 25 trainers, Avia BH 33 fighters, as well as Dewoitine D1 high wing monoplanes fighters. Due to the reluctance of the long term allies to supply modern equipment to renew the aging Air Force, the Yugoslav government lost precious time by failing to commit immediately to the industrial cooperation with the only other available source at the time, Germany.

Georgios Averof (Θ/Κ Γεώργιος Αβέρωφ) is a Pisa class armored cruiser of the predreadnought era. The ship was the third from the series of Pisa class ships after Pisa and Amalfi. The ship initially (1907) was ordered for Marinha do Brasil, but one year later the Brazilian government abandoned the order. As a result of this decision, the construction works for the armored cruiser halted. However in 1909 the ship was acquired by the Royal Hellenic Navy and named Georgios Averof.

The work on the design of future long-range active anti-aircraft and anti-submarine ship – as it was initially determined – was conducted by the Leningrad CKB-17 in close cooperation with OKB-938 led by N.I. Kamov. The author of the ship’s design, which was given the number 1123 and the code “Kondor”, was A.S. Sawiczew, and from 1967 – A.W. Marinich. The main task of the ship was to search and destroy American nuclear submarines carrying “Polaris” ballistic missiles in the Antarctic Ocean and Barents Sea.

STUKA! The very name is synonymous with the screaming sirens and the crump of heavy bombs. For the lightly armed Partisan forces it meant despair, defeat and in a lot of cases, death. For five long years Stuka units in the Balkan theater have come and gone, depending on the Axis war fortunes. They did not have permanent base, as was the case with NSGR. 7 for example, but the bomb loads that the Ju 87 carried and the precision to deliver them, was the wining combination. In all major military operations in Yugoslavia against Tito’s forces, Stuka was an element which was always included in Commander’s plans. In September 1943 it was Stukas who spearheaded the defeat of the Italian forces since German land forces were few in numbers. Until the last day of WW II in Yugoslavia, Stuka was on the first line of fire even against a strong foe such as the Red Army.

Junkers Ju 87 ‘Stuka’, the most famous WW2 German dive bomber. This publication is a visual study of the production variants of the Junkers Ju 87 B. The 20 page, A4 size booklet contains 7 sheets of 1:48 scale drawings, 8 sheets of 1:72 scale drawings with specification of external changes in various versions of the aircraft and colour profiles of 5 planes, all with English and Polish captions.

In the interwar period the battleship "Marat" was considered a symbol of the naval power of the Soviet Union. She was the most-described and filmed ship of the Land of the Soviets. In her 40-year service, rich in events, she survived four wars, but only in one of them - the civil war - she used her main guns in an engagement with enemy warships. Only once in her career. In other conflicts, she served as a monitor rather than a battleship, shelling mainly land targets and carrying out counter-battery fire. At the end, she fell victim of the destructive power of German dive bombers. From that moment, she was a battleship only on paper. Mutilated and devoid of propulsion, she was still biting at the Germans from her remaining guns, and after the war, young pupils of the maritime craft appeared on board. Though it sounds absurd, even her reconstruction as a battleship was considered. This misconceived idea was not fortunately realized and the wreck - because it became one in the final period of service - finally went for scrap.

In February 1938, the United States Navy opened a competition for a new fighter. His maximum speed and operational ceiling were to exceed all the machines that the American aviation had at the time. Among others, the Chance Vought company entered the competition. The Corsair was designed by a team of engineers led by Rex Beisel, the company’s chief constructor. The prototype XF4U-1 was flown on May 29, 1940. The Corsair was powered by an eighteen-cylinder Pratt& Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp. That was the largest and the most powerful radial engine ever installed in a single-seat front fighter.

Following the defeat in the Guadalcanal campaign, at the beginning of 1943, the Navy Technical Department and The High Command of the Imperial Japanese Navy strived to increase the defensive potential of all their warships. Apart from standard refits of the majority of the Imperial Japanese Navy units, a plan was adopted, which called for reconstruction of two “Takao” class heavy cruisers into anti-aircraft units. Through a coincidence only the Maya underwent such conversion. This publication shows the cruiser in her anti-aircraft configuration and briefly describes her career.

The Imperial Naval Staff demanded the development of a destroyer project with owerful weaponry and capable of reaching speed of 40 knots. The project was approved and marked with the symbol "F52", it was included in the financial plan of 1939 "Maru Yon". According to the project, the armament was to consist of three two-barrel 127 mm gun turrets, and two seven-tube torpedo launchers. Due to the heavy weight of the tubes and the inability of emergency manual control of the launchers, this idea was abandoned. In connection with this, a project was prepared and the construction of the Japanese destroyer with the number 125later nam, ed "Shimakaze" commenced.

British battleship HMS Royal Oak secured place in the history books as unlikely hero – sunk as a result of one of the most famous naval operations of the World War II. German submarine U-47, commanded by G. Prien, after undetected penetration into the Royal Navy Scapa Flow base, sent her down the bottom of the ocean together with the majority of her crew. This was one of the most painful losses of the British fleet during the war.Royal Oak was one of five class “Revenge” vessels, better known as simple “R”, battleships built throughout the World War I. Amongst her strong sides were very powerful main guns, quite good sailing abilities and interesting, “bulky” profile. “R” battleships have not participated in many of the naval operations of the Great War, as for Royal Oak she took her part in the battle of Jutland. Between the wars HMS Royal Oak was incorporated into the Atlantic Fleet and Home Fleet. She operated on the Mediterranean Sea during the Spanish Civil War.