Nick Hewitt

Nick Hewitt is an author and naval historian. He is head of collections and research at the National Museum of the Royal Navy

British troops land in Normandy on 6 June 1944. D-Day, and the complex operations that followed, would not have been possible without Allied sailors (Photo by Photo 12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

The seaborne invasion: why we must remember the forgotten heroes of D-Day and the battle for Normandy. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Japanese soldiers and sailors disembark at Vladivostok, 22 August 1918. Of all the foreign interventions into the Russian civil war, the one from Japan was by far the largest, growing to 70,000 troops. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Britain’s Russian fiasco: Allied intervention in the Russian civil war. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

HMS Bittern on fire and severely damaged after a German air attack in Namsos fjord, 30 April 1940. Both sides sustained heavy losses in the battle of Norway but the German navy was less able to absorb these than its British foe. (Photo by Topfoto)

Second World War

Narvik in contextHow battle for Norway in 1940 saved Britain