Tanker Wars: The Assault on Merchant Shipping During the Iran-Iraq Crisis, 1980-1988

Description

During the Iran-Iraq war, hundreds of merchant vessels were attacked, more than 400 seamen killed and millions of dollars' worth of damages were suffered by owners, charterers and insurers. In the most sustained assault on merchant shipping since the Second World War, the control of shipping routes, destruction of enemy and enemy-allied ships, and the protection of oil exports, were key objectives. These campaigns touched the economic and security interests of the Gulf states by threatening their exports and highlighting their political and military vulnerability. The ripples of the tanker wars extended well beyond the region with attacks on vessels with foreign flags which invoked international concern and drew in foreign naval forces.

E. R. (Ted) Hooton has been a journalist for 40 years and a defence journalist for about 25 years. He has written numerous articles on military history and three highly regarded books on the history of the Luftwaffe - The Luftwaffe: A Study in Air Power 1933-1945 (2010), Phoenix Triumphant: The Rise and Rise of the Luftwaffe (1992) and Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe (1997), as well as contributing to several others. He has also written a detailed history of air operations over the Western Front, War above the Trenches - Air Power and the Western Front Campaigns 1916-1918 (2010) and Stalin's Claws (2012), an account of Stalin's military purges and the Soviet wars prior to Barbarossa.