Naval War

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.

One of WWII’s pivotal events was the capture of U-505 on June 4, 1944. The top secret seizure of this massive Type IX submarine provided the Allies with priceless information on German technology and innovation. After the war, U-505 was transported to Chicago, where today several hundred thousand visitors a year pass through its well-preserved hull at the Museum of Science and Industry. Hunt and Kill offers the first definitive study of U-505.

On the morning of October 24, 1944, in the Sibuyan Sea amidst the Philippine Islands, VT-18, a close-knit squadron of six young American torpedo bomber pilots, departed the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid on a search and destroy mission. Their target: the super-battleship Musashi, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The pilots were tasked with preventing the immense enemy warship and the huge naval armada of which she was a part from inflicting unspeakable damage.

The Battle of Midway was, on paper, an improbable victory for the smaller, less experienced American navy and air force, so much so that it was quickly described as “a miracle.” This new history demonstrates that luck, let alone miracles, had little to do with it. In The Silver Waterfall, Brendan Simms and Steven McGregor show how the efforts of America’s peacetime navy combined with creative innovations made by designers and industrialists were largely responsible for the victory.

When a highly sophisticated missile guidance device, developed in US, finds itself in the hands of an unscrupulous group of rebels in Afghanistan and were planning to escalate the tension in the region by targeting cities throughout the middle east. The US President was demanding every resource to be used to find these missiles but without success. Back in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a couple of young sailors find themselves caught up in these world events by just being anchored in the wrong place at the wrong time. There world is turned into a living nightmare as they unwittingly ...

Read the first English translation of the first-hand account of Zeppelin operations during World War One, written by Zeppelin commander Over-Lieutenant at Sea Treusch von Buttlar-Brandenfels, originally written and published in 1917. Procedes fund the building of airships.

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.

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.

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.

No other battle of the Second World War lasted longer than the 2,075 days of the Battle of the Atlantic. It raged from the opening day of the war in September 1939 until it ended almost six years later with Germany’s surrender in May 1945. Vital supplies of food, fuel, and the raw materials needed by the Allies to wage war had to be transported in merchant ships in escorted convoys across the Atlantic Ocean, where they were at the mercy of German U-boats and warships.

The ability of the US Navy to fight and win a protracted war in the Pacific was not solely the result of technology, tactics, or leadership. Naval aviation maintenance played a major role in the US victory over Japan in WWII. The naval war against Japan did not achieve sustained success until enough aircraft technicians were available to support the high tempo of aviation operations that fast carrier task force doctrine demanded.

Vice Admiral Sir Peter Gretton's book is a brilliant account of his career in the navy through World War Two: fighting in the Second Battle of the Narvik and guarding convoys in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, before being placed in charge of Escort Group B7. Convoy Escort Commander demonstrates how Allied commanders searched for new methods to repel U-boat assaults, including using direction-finding radio and radar, employing special tactical formations, coordinating with air cover, and endeavoring to keep the convoy together and prevent straggling.

An epic account of how the Royal Navy tracked down, cornered, and sank one of the most fearsome German warships of the Second World War.

The Dirty Dozen meets Band of Brothers in this true story of how a rusty old New Orleans banana boat staffed with an unlikely crew of international merchant seamen, a gang of inmates from a local jail, and a French harbor pilot spirited out of Morocco by O.S.S. agents in the trunk of a Chevy, were drafted into service in WWII - and heroically succeeded in setting the stage for Patton's epic invasion of North Africa.

The Commonwealth’s legendary space battleship is rushed to reinforce Pacifica Sector, but Grand Admiral Yamamoto has laid a trap. The war takes an uneasy turn as the Giapan Imperial fleet moves into position. A strike against just the Commonwealth or the Titanian Union will not be enough. In one week the fleet will need to annihilate every capital ship in the Pacifica Sector. For this mission Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto assembles the greatest Imperial Fleet to ever leave the homeworld. Scouts confirm a significant Giapan Imperial navy buildup far from the frontlines. The Titanians have ...

Danger's Hour explores the May 11, 1945, attack on the USS Bunker Hill, one of the deadliest kamikaze attacks of World War II. The book details the story of the ship herself (a technological marvel), her crew, and her kamikaze adversaries. Maxwell Taylor Kennedy shows how crucial this battle was to victory in the Pacific, even though it was overshadowed by the almost simultaneous surrender of the Nazis in Europe. With this extensive research, Kennedy tells the human story on both sides of the battle.

Following the naval victories of the War of 1812 and the Second Barbary War, the United States is finally expanding its navy to take a place of prominence in world affairs. Bliven Putnam, now Captain of the sloop of war Rappahannock, has come into his own as a leader and is ordered to the Pacific. But with this new tour of duty to last more than two years, his patient wife, Clarity, unwilling to accept such a brief time together, at last puts her foot down. If she can't keep Putnam with her, then she'll just have to go with him.

For four years at Annapolis he prepared for this, pledging his youth, his ambition, and even his life. But when junior officer Dan Lenson finally gets his commission, it's an aging World War II destroyer. Now, with a mix of pride and fear, he heads into the world's most dangerous seas. As the Ryan plunges into the dark waters of the Arctic Circle at the height of storm season, Lenson and the crew pursue a mysterious and menacing enemy. But he soon discovers a foe even more dangerous within the Ryan, advancing a shocking agenda that drives the ship ever closer to disaster.

In a tour-de-force of document sleuthing and insights gleaned from the excavation of a remarkable vessel, distinguished Civil War-era historian Tom Chaffin presents the most thorough telling of the H. L. Hunley's story possible. Of panoramic breadth, this Civil War saga begins long before the submarine was even assembled and follows the tale into the boat's final hours and through its recovery in 2000.

Before becoming an instructor in the Navy's Topgun program, Dave "Bio" Baranek was just another kid with a dream. Upon graduating from college, he joined the Navy with the goal of becoming a fighter pilot. But, his eyesight waning, he knew that he would never be able to reach that goal. Undaunted, he plowed ahead and found his niche as a radar intercept operator in the backseat of the sleek, new Grumman F-14 Tomcat.