Naval History

A young naval officer comes to grips with his feelings about racism, and the struggle to resolve the conflict between the needs of his family, and his career. Based upon real events, it is clear that many race problems in the US Navy were unresolved in the mid-1970’s. Lieutenant (junior grade) Mitch Payne reports to the USS Scarslund, a Navy destroyer long past its prime, ready to work hard and restart his stalled career. He has to navigate treacherous wardroom politics, even as building racial tensions deteriorate. Everything comes to a head when black sailors stage a massed disobedience...

This radical new book concentrates on the way in which each side tried to use or deny the sea to the other, and in so doing describes rapid wartime changes not only in ship and weapons technology but also in the way naval warfare was envisaged and fought. Melding strategic, technical, and tactical aspects, Friedman approaches World War I from a fresh perspective and demonstrates how its perceived lessons dominated the way navies prepared for World War II.

On the night of August 13, 1944, the U.S. submarine Flier struck a mine in the Sulu Sea in the southern Philippines as it steamed along the surface. All but fifteen of the more than eighty-strong crew went down with the vessel. Of those left floating in the dark, eight survived by swimming for seventeen hours before washing ashore on an uninhabited island. The story of the Flier and its eight survivors is wholly unique in the annals of U.S. military history.

The Archerfish, a diesel powered Balao-class submarine crafted in the 1940s, won a unique, heroic place in military history and the memories of her crew members. Here is her story: from her assembly in New England and her dedication by Eleanor Roosevelt's personal secretary, to her service in World War II, where she broke the back of the Japanese Navy, and her critical role in the Cold War.

From the New York Times best-selling author comes the definitive history of one of the greatest battles ever fought - a riveting nonfiction chronicle published to commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of Napoleon's last stand.

The United States Navy won such overwhelming victories in 1944 that had the Navy faced a different enemy the war would have been over at the conclusion of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. However, in the moment of victory on October 25, 1944, the US Navy found itself confronting an enemy that had been inconceivable until it appeared. The kamikaze, meaning 'divine wind' in Japanese, was something Americans were totally unprepared for; a violation of every belief held in the West.

The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland. The magnificent ship is already boiling over with a mutinous plot that is just about to break into the open when, just off the coast of Western Australia, it strikes an unseen reef in the middle of the night.

HG-76 sailed from Gibraltar to Britain in December 1941 and was specially targeted by the Germans. A wolfpack of U-boats was sent against it, and the Luftwaffe was heavily committed too in a rare example of German inter-service cooperation. German intelligence agents in Gibraltar and Spain also knew every detail of HG-76 before it had even sailed, seemingly stacking the odds in favour of the Kriegsmarine. Despite this the convoy fought its way through.

José Ignacio Cellier de Martí (Barcelona 1932-2014), Captain of the Spanish Navy, professor at the Nautical Faculty of Barcelona and expert in naval history of Catalonia, follows year by year, with maps of his own elaboration, the campaigns of the legendary admiral Roger de Lauria, from 1283 to the end of his days in 1305. His speed of movement, his tactics, his energy, ardor and ferocity astonished many; By sea, and even on land, he had no enemies, and the mere presence of him surrounded by his Almogavars, Catalan crossbowmen, and Sicilian sailors, made the navies of other States ...

This compelling history examines the closing months of the vital campaign which ultimately determined the successful conclusion of the Pacific War for the Allies. But it had not been a smooth process. The campaign continued in fits and starts with both the US Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy making crucial errors. But as the pendulum of war swung, there was one distinct advantage to the Allies. This was the successful efforts by the United States Army Signals Intelligence Section and the Navy Communication Special Unit to monitor, intercept, decode and translate Japanese messages.

A few minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912, the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage to New York, struck an iceberg. Less than three hours later she lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. While the world has remained fascinated by the tragedy, the most amazing drama of those fateful hours was not played out aboard the doomed liner. It took place on the decks of two other ships, one 58 miles distant from the sinking Titanic, the other barely 10 miles away.

On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss. Pacific Crucible tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history and seized the strategic initiative.

From August 7th 1942 until February 24th 1944, the US Navy fought the most difficult campaign in its history. Between the landing of the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and the final withdrawal of the Imperial Japanese Navy from its main South Pacific base at Rabaul, the US Navy suffered such high personnel losses that for years it refused to publicly release total casualty figures.

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner.

On June 4, 1944, the course of World War II was forever changed. That day, a US Navy task force achieved the impossible—capturing a German U-Boat. Called Operation Nemo, it was the first seizure of an enemy ship in battle since the War of 1812, one of the greatest achievements of the US Navy and a victory that shortened the duration of the war. A deeply researched, fast-paced World War II narrative for the ages, Charles Lachman’s white-knuckled war saga and thrilling cat-and-mouse game is told through the eyes of the men on both sides of Operation Nemo.

Shadows Under the Waves A powerful journey through the history, evolution, and legacy of submarine warfare. Dive beneath the surface in this visually compelling and thought-provoking exploration of submarine warfare—where silence, strategy, and steel have shaped the course of history. From ancient underwater concepts to cutting-edge nuclear submarines, this book uncovers the hidden world beneath the waves.What’s inside: A sweeping historical narrative Discover the evolution of submarines from early Renaissance sketches to Cold War-era nuclear leviathans and today’s stealth machines. ...

In this book, historian Robert C. Stern analyzes the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first major fleet engagement where the warships were never in sight of each other. Unlike the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Coral Sea has received remarkably little study. Stern covers not only the action of the ships and their air groups but also describes the impact of this pivotal engagement.

“Sheepdogs, Tom,” Jerry said. He got a beer from the ice bucket and handed Tom one. “We’re the convoys’ sheepdogs. You know the difference between a shepherd dog and a sheepdog?” Tom leaned back in his own chair and sipped his beer. “I thought they were about the same.” “Oh, sheepdogs and shepherds are very different. The sheepdogs live with the sheep. When they’re puppies, they sometimes even nurse from the ewes. They look like the sheep and they love the sheep. Then some animal shows up – a strange dog or a wolf. Out west it’s mostly coyotes but sometimes it’s ...

The USS Cowpens and her crew weren’t your typical heroes. She was a flattop that the US Navy initially didn’t want, with a captain nearly scapegoated for the loss of his last command, pilots who self-trained on the planes they would fly into combat, and sailors that had been in uniform barely longer than the ship had been afloat. Despite their humble origins, Cowpens and her band of second-string reservists and citizen sailors served with distinction, fighting in nearly every major carrier operation from 1943 to 1945, including the Battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf.

Holding the Line chronicles the carrier war in Korea from the first day of the war to the last, focusing on frontline combat while also describing the technical development of aircraft and shipboard operations and how these all affected the broader strategic situation on the Korean Peninsula.