Naval Military History

Naval combat underwent a significant metamorphosis during World War II. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan launched some of the most powerful battleships ever to sail the world's oceans, yet the conflict witnessed the emergence and triumph of the aircraft carrier as the 20th century's true monarch of the seas.

The day that will live in infamy was just the beginning.... In 1940, still in high school, Henry P. Lawrence joined the Navy Reserves. Little did he know that a year later, in May of 1941, he'd be called to service and deployed to Hawaii. No one believed the Japanese would be aggressive enough to attack a US territory. Their plan...to cripple the United States military. The attack at Pearl came hard and fast. I Was Just a Radioman is a collection of the memoirs of ARM Henry P. Lawrence, a WWII Pearl Harbor survivor and decorated war veteran.

The Submarine Lifeguard League was formed toward the end of World War II in order to rescue downed Allied pilots. The League helped to save the lives of hundreds of Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps pilots from the Japanese as well as from death at sea. The author provides a riveting narrative of the adventures of this subdivision of the US Naval Fleet. From being killers, the US submarines changed into lifesavers in the last two years of the war. The author, Vice-Admiral Charles Lockwood (1890-1967) was the legendary commander of the US submarine fleet in the Pacific.

En shock por el hundimiento del destructor Sheffield, Gran Bretaña teme una derrota y envía a un escuadrón de ocho hombres a Tierra del Fuego. Tienen una misión imposible: encontrar y destruir los aviones Super Étendard y los misiles Exocet alojados en una base militar de la Patagonia y matar a los pilotos.

"Top Secret" mystery missions, many without other ships in support, were becoming uncomfortably familiar for the crew of the USS Nashville CL43. It started like a Hollywood thriller, secretly transporting from England $25 million in British gold bullion, delivered to the ship in unguarded bread trucks, a pre-war "Neutrality Patrol" that was really an unofficial hostile search for the far bigger and more powerful German battleship Prinz Eugen, and sneaking through the Panama Canal at night with the ship’s name and hull number covered for secrecy.

In April 1943, Commander Peter Gretton was in charge of escorting a vital Allied trade convoy from New York to Great Britain across the North Atlantic. Over the course of the voyage, the sixty-one merchant ships of convoy HX231, along with the six ships of B7 Escort Group, were continuously shadowed and attacked by a German wolf pack of twenty U-boats. Drawing on reports from both sides, Gretton details the sequence of events as convoy HX231 battled its way through a large wolf pack and offers an authoritative post-battle analysis of the strategies, decisions, and actions taken.

The waters of the Pacific Ocean - stretching deep blue under the tropical sun, or scourged by typhoons - provided World War II's most far-flung battlefield. Two of the world's premier mid-20th century maritime powers, the United States of America and the Empire of Japan, grappled for supremacy across that pelagic expanse. In the process, they forcefully sounded the death knell of battleships and naval gunnery, ushering in the era of the aircraft carrier and the submarine.

Their stories needed to be told. And classmates working together, under a blanket of trust and friendship, was the only way to allow people to open up. It was a three year journey into the hearts and souls of America's youngest heroes to gather these important historical accounts, but it was worth every hour spent. Inside this book are the voices the first Annapolis graduates into a decade of war and they remind us that America is in good hands. They were walking to class on 9/11, wearing Naval Academy summer working blues, when the towers were struck.

Alfred Thayer Mahan is arguably the most influential military strategist in American history, and one of the world’s most important naval theorists. After a lengthy naval career, Mahan had assignments at the Naval Academy and the Brooklyn Naval Yard. He was invited to lecture at the Naval War College, and it was there that he collected together his notes and wrote a book, The Influence of Naval Power upon History, which somehow became an international best seller in 1890. Mahan went on to write twenty books and hundreds of essays and articles, most related to naval affairs.

Welcome to this tome of stories about the United States Marines. Members of the finest fighting force in the world. In this audiobook, we will look at their unique organization and the men and women who it is comprised of. Some stories are insightful, some funny—all are Marine.

Some of the greatest names in naval history, Admiral Horatio Nelson, commodore Stephen Decatur, Admiral Erich Raeder, and many others fill War at Sea in a way that not only educates but entertains any listener interested in the story of naval warfare. From the Chesapeake Bay to Jutland, from the River Plate to Guadalcanal, from Hampton Roads to Leyte Gulf, here are the most compelling and memorable accounts of the days of sail and steam, of wood and iron, and of duels to the death on the waters.

In October 1941, the British Admiralty based a surface strike force in Malta to attack Axis sea lanes between Italy and Africa. Aided by Ultra intelligence, submarines, and bombers based in Malta, this force dominated the Central Mediterranean. From the end of October through the middle of December 1941, less than a third of the supplies shipped from Italian ports arrived in Libya. Shortages of ammunition and fuel finally compelled the Afrika Korps to retreat 400 miles. Then, in the space of 30 hours, this all changed.

Vice Admiral John L. McCrea worked with the president of the United States on difficult and unusual assignments, associated with royalty and world-famous political and military leaders, and he commanded the USS Iowa and a task force in the Pacific. Over the years, many urged him to write a book, and before his passing he finally recorded his reminiscences. Captain McCrea's War captures his amazing tales from the World War II years.

A gifted storyteller, Kernan gives a candid account of his experiences during World War II, providing shrewd observations about the culture and ideology of an important era in naval history.

They called the wind a sirocco, a wind borne sandstorm from the Sahara Desert that blackens the day. Donland called it a DEVIL’S WIND. It was just one of the perils he faces on The Slave Coast of Africa. He is on his own with only half of Oxford’s crew and with half of her guns. Upon arrival on the Slave Coast the newly married Donland is ordered by the tyrannical governor to dispatch a Spanish frigate captured by pirates who prey on the slave traders. How hard is it to hide a frigate? The Slave Coast of Africa is honeycombed with rivers and coves, each has to be searched and each holds...

In November 1944, the U.S. Navy fleet lay at anchor in Ulithi Harbor, deep in the Pacific Ocean, when the oiler USS Mississinewa erupted in a ball of flames. Japan's secret weapon, the Kaiten - a manned suicide submarine - had succeeded in its first mission. The Kaiten was so secret that even Japanese naval commanders didn't know of its existence. And the Americans kept it secret as well. Embarrassed by the shocking surprise attack, the U.S. Navy refused to salvage or inspect the sunken Mighty Miss.

The Mediterranean, 1943... The HMS Rob Roy. A tiny machine, just 230 feet from stem to stern. In peacetime she would have trawled for cod. Now her catch is deadlier by far. Lieutenant-Commander Ian Ransome is a veteran of the treacherous front line of naval combat. Under sealed orders in the battle-tossed waters of the Mediterranean, he and his jack-tired crew face one final test of their courage....

This is the extraordinary story of the mutiny aboard the frigate HMS Hermione in 1797 (eight years after the mutiny on the Bounty) - the bloodiest mutiny ever suffered by the Royal Navy, which led to the extradition from America, and the hanging by the British, of the martyred sailor Jonathan Robbins. This event plunged the two-decades-old American Republic into a constitutional crisis and powerfully contributed to the outcome of the US presidential election of 1800.

Author Stephen Young - a seaman on the battleship Oklahoma when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor - recounts his terrifying experience with incredible realism.

By mid-1942 the Allies were losing the Mediterranean war: Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. In June 1942 the British Royal Navy made a stupendous effort to break the Axis stranglehold. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria.