Naval Military History

On May 19, 1942, a U-boat in the Gulf of Mexico stalked its prey 50 miles away from New Orleans. Captained by 29-year-old Iron Cross recipient Erich Würdemann, the submarine set its sights on the freighter Heredia with 59 souls onboard. Most of the crew were merchant seamen, but there were also a handful of civilians, including the Downs family, consisting of the parents, Ray Sr. and Ina; along with their two children, eight-year-old Ray Jr., nicknamed "Sonny", and 11-year-old Lucille.

No espionage missions have been kept more secret than those involving American submarines. Blind Man's Bluff reveals for the first time how the Navy sent subs wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables, as well as other secrets as deep as the sea.

During the summer of 1776, a British incursion from Canada loomed. In response, citizen soldiers of the newly independent nation mounted a heroic defense. Patriots constructed a small fleet of gunboats on Lake Champlain in northern New York and confronted the Royal Navy in a desperate three-day battle near Valcour Island. Their effort surprised the arrogant British and forced the enemy to call off their invasion.

In May 1941 the German battleship Bismarck, accompanied by heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, broke out into the Atlantic to attack Allied shipping. The Royal Navy's pursuit and subsequent destruction of the Bismarck was an epic of naval warfare. In this new account of those dramatic events at the height of the Second World War, Iain Ballantyne draws extensively on the graphic eyewitness testimony of veterans to construct a thrilling story, mainly from the point of view of the British battleships, cruisers, and destroyers involved.

Against the Tide is a leadership book that illustrates how Adm. Hyman Rickover made a unique impact on American and Navy culture. Dave Oliver is the first former nuclear submarine commander who sailed for the venerable admiral to write about Rickover's management techniques. Oliver draws upon a wealth of untold stories to show how one man changed American and Navy culture while altering the course of history.

The incredible true story of nine Hellcat submarines assigned to penetrate the dense minefields protecting the sea of Japan. In 1945-with no knowledge of the development of the atomic bomb- American submarine commanders, desperate to avoid an invasion of the home islands, believed that if the Japanese merchant fleet was sunk, the enemy would be forced to surrender.

Whilst the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet, restricted for much of the period after 1919 by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, was relatively small in comparison to the Royal Navy, it did possess a number of highly potent battleships and other capital vessels that could - and did - pose a major threat to British interests in the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. Amongst the most powerful were the two battleships - the Bismarck and the Tirpitz.

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...

On the morning of April 16, 1945, the crewmen of the USS Laffey saw what seemed to be the entire Japanese air force assembled directly above. They were about to become the targets of the largest single-ship kamikaze attack of World War II.

The Battle of Dunkirk, in May/June 1940, is remembered as a stunning defeat yet a major victory as well. The Nazis had beaten back the Allies and pushed them across France to the northern port of Dunkirk. In the ultimate race against time, more than 300,000 Allied soldiers were daringly evacuated across the Channel. This moment of German aggression was used by Winston Churchill as a call to Franklin Roosevelt to enter the war.

Told from the point of view of the men who waged this steel-shattering battle, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors captures Navy pilots attacking enemy battleships with makeshift weapons and sacrificial valor, a veteran commander improvising tactics never taught in Annapolis, and young crews from across America rising to an impossible challenge.

In its voracious hunger to fill its decks and spars with the bodies of strong young sailors, the nineteenth century US Navy and the commercial maritime industry welcomed eccentrics, criminals, outcasts, and misfits into a community of the marginalized, one that held very different values and expectations than the towns and villages from which the young men fled, a community that offered a tentative refuge to men who were sexually attracted to other men. Benemann provides an in-depth examination of nineteenth century LGBTQ culture as it developed at sea and in America's port cities.

For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.

For more than three decades, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the US Navy’s premier carrier-based, multirole fighter jet. From its harrowing combat missions over Libya to its appearance on the silver screen in movies like Top Gun and Executive Decision, the F-14 has become an icon of American air power. Now, for the first time in a single volume, Tomcat Fury explores the illustrious combat history of the F-14, from the Gulf of Sidra to the Iran-Iraq War to the skies over Afghanistan in the Global War on Terror.

After Tripoli declared war on the United States in 1801, Barbary pirates captured 300 U.S. sailors and marines. President Jefferson sent navy squadrons to the Mediterranean, but he also authorized a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. He chose an unlikely diplomat, William Eaton, to lead the mission, but before Eaton departed, Jefferson grew wary of the affair and withdrew his support.

Poopie Suits & Cowboy Boots: Tales of a Submarine Officer During the Height of the Cold War, now in its fifth edition since 2017, has earned a popular place in modern submarine literature for its engaging style and pacing. Set in the throes of the Cold War during the Nixon administration, the story follows the journey of Frank Hood through training and eventual deployment as a junior officer aboard a fast-attack submarine (USS Seahorse [SSN-669]) based out of Charleston, South Carolina.

Orphaned at five, nothing held Whidden back from embarking on sea life seven years later. Serving as an apprentice, he quickly proved his worth and earned himself a mate's position by his early 20s. Graduating to third, second, and first office, he ended his career in command of, and having part-ownership of, his own vessel. Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days records a series of real events from his childhood impressions of rough and ready seamen to his thrilling and brutal experiences of war.

In the late 1990s, Patrick O’Brian’s beloved, massively bestselling historical novel series was destined for film. With director Peter Weir and stars Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany signed on for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, there was only one problem: The Rose, the replica eighteenth-century warship that filmmakers bought for the production, was in Newport, Rhode Island, two oceans and thousands of miles away from Hollywood. Enter a ragtag crew of thirty oddballs and tall-ship fanatics, including author Will Sofrin.

Join veteran submariner and decorated veteran of the submarine service Andrew Karam and the crew of the USS Plunger (SSN 595) as it goes up against the best of the Soviet Navy on an extended "special operation" in the waning days of the Cold War and find out what life at sea is really like.

Although slowly building its navy while neutral during the early years of World War II, the US was struck a serious blow when its battleships, the lynchpin of US naval doctrine, were the target of the dramatic attack at Pearl Harbor.