Showing titles in Naval Forces

At the peak of his power, in the 1940s and 1950s, William Francis Gibbs was considered America's best naval architect. His quest to build the finest, fastest, most beautiful ocean liner of his time, the S.S. United States, was a topic of national fascination. When completed in 1952, the ship was hailed as a technological masterpiece at a time when "made in America" meant the best.

The book focuses on four naval commanders, two American, two Japanese, whose lives collided at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 - a clash involving more ships (almost 300), more men (nearly 200,000) and covering a larger area (more than 100 thousand square miles, roughly the size of the British Isles) than any naval battle in recorded history.

For four centuries the British realm depended on sea power to defend itself against a myriad of threats. The Royal Navy established itself as the "Sovereign of the Seas", helping transform a small island nation into the center of a global empire. But Britain's maritime services faced an unprecedented challenge during World War II, and the survival of the nation was at stake. The Longest Campaign tells the epic story of British sea power in the Second World War.

Task Force 58 was World War II's most powerful battle fleet. Made up in mid-1944 of sixteen aircraft carriers, over a thousand combat aircraft, and an armada of escorts, it was vital to victory over Japan. In this compelling account, Evan Mawdsley charts the 3,500-mile dash of the "Big Blue Fleet" across the Central Pacific in the first six months of 1944, overwhelming enemy opposition and transforming the nature of naval warfare.

Has history been wrong for 200 years? Read the startling truth about the mutiny on the Bounty, its characters, causes, and aftermath. Television rights are now in development with Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions. More than two centuries after Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny...

Barrow's Boys is a spellbinding account of perilous journeys to uncharted areas under the most challenging conditions. Fergus Fleming captures the passion for exploration that led a band of men into situations that would humble today's bravest adventurers.

This riveting chronicle of submarine warfare is the first to cover all the major submarine campaigns of the war, describing, in detail, the operations of the British, American, Japanese, Italian, and German submarine and anti-submarine forces. Beginning with a vivid re-creation of the sinking of the passenger liner Athenia by a German U-boat in September 1939, critically acclaimed military historian Peter Padfield's compelling narrative casts an unflinching eye on the devastating consequences of maritime warfare.

Strategy and reality collide in Peter Fey's gripping history of aircraft carrier USS Oriskany's three deployments to Vietnam with Carrier Air Wing 16 (CVW-16). Its tours coincided with the most dangerous phases of Operation Rolling Thunder, the ill-fated bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and accounted for a quarter of all the naval aircraft lost during Rolling Thunder. The Johnson administration's policy of gradually applied force meant that Oriskany arrived on station just as previous restrictions were lifted and bombing raids increased.

America’s most decorated warship of World War II, Enterprise was constantly engaged against the Japanese Empire, earning the title “the fightingest ship” in the navy. Her career was eventful, vital, and short. Commissioned in 1938, her bombers sank a submarine just ten days after the Pearl Harbor attack, claiming the first Japanese vessel lost in the war.

No radio distress call ever crackled from the submarine USS Grunion. In 1942, under the fog of World War II, the vessel simply vanished without a trace. For nearly sixty-five years, only a dead silence lingered regarding the fate of the sub and its seventy-man crew—until now. Here author Peter F. Stevens reveals the incredible true story of the search for and discovery of the Grunion—as well as the navy’s shocking and willful cover-up of the submarine’s baffling disappearance.

In 1768 Captain James Cook and his crew set out on a small British naval vessel in search of a missing continent. 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of that voyage, and Cook's 'discovery' of Australia. Captain Cook's Epic Voyage reveals the hardships and adventure of this remarkable quest, and the euphoria of discovering new lands.

Following the disastrous Java Sea campaign, the Allies went on the offensive in the Pacific in a desperate attempt to halt the Japanese forces that were rampaging across the region. With the conquest of Australia a very real possibility, the stakes were high. Their target: the Japanese-held Soloman Islands, in particular the southern island of Guadalcanal. Hamstrung by arcane pre-war thinking and a bureaucratic mind-set, the US Navy had to adapt on the fly in order to compete with the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy, whose ingenuity had fostered the creation of its Pacific empire.

More than a century later, historians still argue about this controversial and misunderstood World War I naval battle off the coast of Denmark. It was the 20th century's first engagement of dreadnoughts - and while it left Britain in control of the North Sea, both sides claimed victory and decades of disputes followed. This book not only retells the story of the battle from both a British and German perspective based on the latest research, but also helps clarify the context of Germany's inevitable naval clash and the aftermath after the smoke had cleared.

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force (the Kido Butai) had been sunk and their grip on the Pacific had been loosened forever. In this absolutely riveting account of a key moment in the history of World War II, one of America's leading naval historians, Craig L. Symonds, paints an unforgettable portrait of ingenuity, courage, and sacrifice.

The navy created by the people of Athens in ancient Greece was one of the finest fighting forces in the history of the world and the model for all other national navies to come. The Athenian navy built a civilization, empowered the world's first democracy, and led a band of ordinary citizens on a voyage of discovery that altered the course of history.

When she first went to sea in April of 1961, the US nuclear submarine Thresher was the most advanced submarine at sea, built specifically to hunt and kill Soviet submarines. In The Death of the USS Thresher, renowned naval and intelligence consultant Norman Polmar recounts the dramatic circumstances surrounding her implosion, which killed all 129 men onboard in history's first loss of a nuclear submarine.

Examines the underlying causes of Pearl Harbor and the revisionist theories that high officials knew of the attack. Gordon W. Prange is the author of Miracle at Midway and At Dawn We Slept. This title is the sequel to At Dawn We Slept.

World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology, and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy.

Mush Morton was a warrior without peer. At the helm of the USS Wahoo he completely changed the way the submarines fought in the Pacific War. He would relentlessly attack the Japanese at every opportunity, burning through his supply of torpedoes in record time on every patrol. Over the course of only nine months and five patrols, Morton racked up an astounding list of achievements, including being the first American skipper to wipe out an entire enemy convoy single-handedly.

The story of the NR-1 is told against the tense background of the Cold War and peopled with such rich characters as the acerbic Admiral Hyman Rickover, ocean scientist Robert Ballard (who found the Titanic), the designers and builders who faced almost impossible tasks to give life to the ship, the unique officers and sailors who took the little boat down into depths on covert missions, and the families who waited for them on shore, unaware that there would be no escape if the boat ran into trouble.