Naval War

No single sea battle has had more far-reaching consequences than the one fought in the harbor at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in March 1862. The Confederacy, with no fleet of its own, built an iron fort containing 10 heavy guns on the hull of a captured Union frigate named the Merrimack. The North got word of the project when it was already well along, and, in desperation, commissioned an eccentric inventor named John Ericsson to build the Monitor, an entirely revolutionary iron warship.

On June 15, 1942, as thousands of vacationers lounged in the sun on Virginia Beach, a massive fireball erupted from a convoy of oil tankers steaming into Chesapeake Bay. By the next day, three ships lay at the bottom of the channel, victims of Lieutenant-Commander Horst Degen and his crew on the German submarine U-701. In The Burning Shore, acclaimed military reporter Ed Offley presents a thrilling account of Degen's rampage along the American coast and of US Lieutenant Harry J. Kane's quest to bring him down.

It’s 1809,the super frigate HMS Relentless is supporting the British Army fighting in the Iberian Peninsula. It has been four years since the by now famous, battle of Trafalgar. At the time, popular opinion had it that it was the end of Napoleon, they failed to take into account the fact that he was still undefeated on land, indeed was still adding laurel leafs to his usurped crown. The French and Spanish Fleets were in a state of recovery, licking their wounds after the Royal Navy had taught them a lesson in seamanship and naval warfare that had amazed the World, and it had taught them ...

Small though they were, PT boats played a key role in World War II, carrying out an astonishing variety of missions where fast, versatile, and strongly armed vessels were needed. Called "weapons of opportunity", they met the enemy at closer quarters and with greater frequency than any other type of surface craft. Among the most famous PT commanders was John F. Kennedy, whose courageous actions in the Pacific are now well known to the American public.

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.

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.

In 1942, the island of Malta was the most heavily bombed place on earth. Its submarine and air attacks on Axis supply convoys were all that kept Rommel from marching across North Africa. But Malta was out of fuel. Operation Pedestal was Malta's last hope, a giant convoy with more that 50 warships escorting 13 freighters and one life-or-death oil tanker, the SS Ohio. It was bombed, torpedoed, and abandoned, but two American Merchant Mariners boarded the ship and repaired the guns.

Impersonating a King's Officer is a death sentence, but Brent had decided long ago, even before the boy died that he would do it. It would be a far better life than that of a power monkey. After the years of torture and pain his chance had come but could he manage it? Setbacks are a part of life and Brent has more than his share after his rescue. His dream of being a naval officer depends on an improbable rescue attempt of four important men from the pit of his nightmares. He, alone, knows of an entrance to the pit and it falls to him to succeed or die.

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 the night of February 17, 1864, the tiny Confederate submarine HL Hunley made its way toward the USS Housatonic just outside Charleston harbor. Within a matter of hours, the Union ship’s stern was blown open in a spray of wood planks. The explosion sank the ship, killing many of its crew. And the submarine, the first ever to be successful in combat, disappeared without a trace. For 131 years the eight-man crew of the HL Hunley lay in their watery graves, undiscovered.

In the summer of 1942, an extraordinary group of men - among them a dentist, a medical student, a Hollywood star, an archaeologist, a British commando, and even former enemies of the Allies - formed an exceptional unit that would later become the US Navy's Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams.

The best way for today's sailors to learn about a battle is from those who fought it. The Battle of Midway, commemorated annually in the US Navy, warrants close attention. This Naval Institute guide includes some of the most vibrant and informed accounts by individuals who fought on both sides of the June 1942 battle. The anthology pulls together memoirs, articles, excerpts from other Naval Institute books, and relevant government documents to help listeners understand what happened and explain why the battle was so significant to the naval service.

The U.S. experienced its most harrowing military disaster of World War II not in 1941 at Pearl Harbor, but rather in the period from 1942 to 1943, in the frigid North Atlantic and American coastal waters from Newfoundland to the Caribbean. Nearly seven decades after the event, the Battle of the Atlantic still stands as the longest-running and most lethal clash of arms in naval history.

In Tin Cans and Greyhounds, author Clint Johnson brings listeners inside the quarter-inch hulls of destroyers to meet the men who manned the ships' five-inch guns and fought America's wars from inside a "tin can" - risking death by cannon shell, shrapnel, bomb, fire, drowning, exposure, and sharks.

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.

In March 1941, after a year of unbroken and devastating U-boat onslaughts, the British War Cabinet decided to try a new strategy in the foundering naval campaign. To do so, they hired an intensely private, bohemian physicist who was also an ardent socialist. Patrick Blackett was a former navy officer and future winner of the Nobel Prize; he is little remembered today, but he and his fellow scientists did as much to win the war against Nazi Germany as almost anyone else.

During the Civil War, both sides believed that whoever controlled the Mississippi River would ultimately be victorious. Cotton exports generated much-needed revenue for the Confederacy, and the Mississippi was also the main conduit for the delivery of materials and food. Similarly, the Union sought to maintain safe passage from St. Louis, Missouri, to Cairo, Illinois, but also worked to bisect the South by seizing the river as part of the Anaconda Plan.

This audiobook is a detailed and comprehensive account of the fighting from both sides. It provides the context of the battle, most obviously in terms of Japanese calculations and the search for "a fitting place to die" and "the chance to bloom as flowers of death."

The Civil War is over. But for Sergeant James Taft, there seems to be no end in sight. He had seldom considered what he would do after the war because he never believed he would live through it. James briefly returns to Pennsylvania in an unsuccessful attempt to work as a farmer. He then sets out to find peace and somehow vanquish the ghosts in his soul. What he can't possibly foresee, as he rides west, is the epic story of tragedy, triumph, and finding oneself. "It's unfortunate, but true, that darkness must often be complete before we notice the subtle glimmer of hope." - Doc Jefferies, ...

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.