Naval History

Warship Builders is the first scholarly study of the US naval shipbuilding industry from the early 1920s to the end of World War II, when American shipyards produced the world's largest fleet that helped defeat the Axis powers in all corners of the globe. A colossal endeavor that absorbed billions and employed virtual armies of skilled workers, naval construction mobilized the nation's leading industrial enterprises in the shipbuilding, engineering, and steel industries to deliver warships whose technical complexity dwarfed that of any other weapons platform.

As command module pilot of Apollo 17, the last crewed flight to the moon, Ron Evans combined precision flying and painstaking geological observation with moments of delight and enthusiasm. As a patriotic American in charge of command module America, Evans was nicknamed “Captain America” by his fellow crew members.

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.

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.

The French Revolutionary Wars catapulted Britain into a conflict against a new enemy: Republican France. Britain relied on the Royal Navy to protect its shores and empire, but as radical ideas about rights and liberty spread across the globe, it could not prevent the spirit of revolution from reaching its ships. In this insightful history, James Davey tells the story of Britain's Royal Navy across the turbulent 1790s. As resistance and rebellion swept through the fleets, the navy itself became a political battleground.

Pacific War expert Mark Stille examines the key aspects of battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval encounter in history and probably the most decisive naval battle of the entire Pacific War, with new and insightful analysis and dismantles the myths surrounding the respective actions and overall performances of the two most important commanders in the battle, and the “lost victory” of the Japanese advance into Leyte Gulf that never happened.

On a late September day in 480 BC, Greek warships faced an invading Persian armada in the narrow Salamis Straits in the most important naval battle of the ancient world. Overwhelmingly outnumbered by the enemy, the Greeks triumphed through a combination of strategy and deception. More than two millennia after it occurred, the clash between the Greeks and Persians at Salamis remains one of the most tactically brilliant battles ever fought.

When Admiral William Halsey selected Destroyer Squadron 21 to lead his victorious ships into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender, it was the most battle-hardened US naval squadron of the war. But it was not the squadron of ships that had accumulated such an inspiring résumé; it was the people serving aboard them. Through diaries, personal interviews with survivors, and letters written to and by the crews during the war, preeminent historian of the Pacific theater John Wukovits brings to life the human story of the squadron and its men.

Regarded as the standard biography of World War II naval hero Adm. Raymond A. Spruance. Spruance, victor of the battles of Midway and the Philippine Sea and commander of the Fifth Fleet in the invasions of the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Marianas, and Okinawa, is one of the towering figures in American naval history. Yet his reserved, cerebral personality did not make "good copy" for correspondents, and until the publication of The Quiet Warrior he remained an elusive figure.

Commander Edward Young (RNRV, DSO, DSC and Bar) started the war as an amateur yachtsman and finished it as a highly decorated submarine commander. Indeed, he was the first RNVR officer to hold independent command of a warship. One of Our Submarines is his gripping and thrilling biography of his adventures below the waves, showing how officers had to transform themselves from amateurs into the equals and, at times, the superiors of the professionals in meeting the demands imposed upon them by war.

Sixty-five thousand tons, 280 metres long. A flight deck the size of 60 tennis courts. A giant piece of Sovereign British territory that's home to up to 50 aircraft. HMS Queen Elizabeth in the biggest ship in the Royal Navy's history and one of the most ambitious and exacting engineering projects ever undertaken in the UK. But it's her ship's company of 700, alongside an air group of 900 air and ground crew, that are Big Lizzie's beating heart. And How to Build an Aircraft Carrier tells their story.

At the heart of Admiral James Stavridis’s training as a naval officer was the preparation to lead sailors in combat, to face the decisive moment in battle whenever it might arise. In To Risk it All, he offers up nine of the most useful and enthralling stories from the US Navy’s nearly 250-year history, and draws from them a set of insights that we can all put to use when confronted with fateful choices.

Command of the oceans was crucial to winning World War II. By the start of 1942 Nazi Germany had conquered mainland Europe, and Imperial Japan had overrun Southeast Asia and much of the Pacific. How could Britain and distant America prevail in what had become a "war of continents"? In this definitive account, Evan Mawdsley traces events at sea from the first U-boat operations in 1939 to the surrender of Japan. He argues that the Allied counterattack involved not just decisive sea battles, but a long struggle to control shipping arteries and move armies across the sea.

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.

So Others May Live: Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers: Saving Lives, Defying Death is the award-winning untold story of the US Coast Guard's quiet but resolute rescue swimmers. From deep ocean caves on the Oregon coast to the panicked and chaotic streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, here are their stunningly heroic stories.

Otto Kretschmer was only in combat from September 1939 until March 1941 but was Germany's highest-scoring U-boat commander, sinking forty-seven ships. This definitive work details his personal story and the political backdrop from his earliest days. After completing his officer training and time on the training ship Niobe, he served aboard the light cruiser Emden. In December 1934, he was transferred to the light cruiser Köln, then in January 1936 made the move to the fledgling U-boat service. D

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.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century.

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.

Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the Philippine Sea when she is sunk by two Japanese torpedoes. For the next five nights and four days, almost 300 miles from the nearest land, nearly 900 men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other. Only 316 will survive. Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic tell the complete story of the ship, her crew, and their final mission to save one of their own.