Naval Military History

In the darkest months of the Second World War, Churchill approved what seemed to many like a suicide mission. Under orders to attack the St Nazaire U-boat base on the Atlantic seaboard, British commandos undertook 'the greatest raid of all', turning an old destroyer into a live bomb and using it to ram the gates of a Nazi stronghold. Drawing on official documents, interviews, unknown accounts and the astonished reactions of French civilians and German forces, The Greatest Raid recreates in cinematic detail the hours in which the 'Charioteers' fought and died.

In its two centuries of existence, America has seen more than its fair share of momentous events. Through it all, the American Navy has not only been a witness but an active and key participant to the creation and progress of the country. It has grown and strengthened its capabilities - from having zero ships and zero expertise to becoming one of the largest fleets in the world.

If you like Max Hastings and World War II naval history, then you will love this autobiography, which gives an easy-to-understand insider view of life in the Royal Navy during the war. Ronnie Turner had set his sights on a career with the Royal Navy, and like Ant Middleton, he wouldn't stop until he'd achieved his goal of having "a smack at the boche". Drawn from Ronnie's illegal war diary, this enjoyable tale of pocket battleships, torpedoed crews, and Admiral Harwood's tattoos, all sprinkled with Spike Milligan-like humor, make this a story you won't want to put down.

Horatio Nelson can be seen as one of the most courageous, strategic, and valiant British generals in history. His tactics in the Navy led their empire to glorious victories in the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. During the wars against Napoleon, the Scandinavians, and in the West Indies, he was an exemplary leader, strategist, and combatant. The British Empire stretched all the way from the Caribbean to Egypt and beyond. Needless to say, much help was needed in various areas in the world.

On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era details the ways in which the US Navy transformed from an antiquated arm of the nation’s military infrastructure into a more dynamic and effective force that was soon to play a pivotal role in a number of national and international conflicts. Jackson developed a clear, concise naval strategy that policymakers and officers alike could seize and execute. They carried out a collective vision that coincided with the national literary movement that recognized America’s future would rely upon the Navy.

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.

Poopie Suits & Cowboy Boots: Tales of a Submarine Officer During the Height of the Cold War, now in its fifth edition since 2017, has earned a popular place in modern submarine literature for its engaging style and pacing. Set in the throes of the Cold War during the Nixon administration, the story follows the journey of Frank Hood through training and eventual deployment as a junior officer aboard a fast-attack submarine (USS Seahorse [SSN-669]) based out of Charleston, South Carolina.

It was a miracle three years in the making, a testimony to American fortitude and ingenuity - and perhaps the key to why the United States won a war that after Pearl Harbor seemed hopeless. Impeccably researched, Avenging Pearl Harbor is colorfully written, personal, chilling, visceral.

For decades, the Navy has stood sentinel over crucial waterways, ensuring safe passage of goods from nearly all nations. The result is the longest phase of peace on the waters since the Phoenicians, with rising living standards, more (total) jobs, and the dramatic decline of poverty in Asia. But these prosperous times could be at an end. Today China is building warships at an extraordinary pace. India, Japan, Vietnam, and Europe are responding with more fighting ships. What will result from China’s rising naval might, particularly in the South China Sea?

Tip the Empire State Building onto its side and you’ll have a sense of the length of the United States Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the most powerful in the world: the USS John F. Kennedy. Weighing 100,000 tons, Kennedy features the most futuristic technology ever put to sea, making it the most agile and lethal global weapon of war.

Bill Paterson narrates Captain Robin L. Hutchison’s fascinating and humorous insider’s take about life onboard some of Scotland's most iconic ships including the Waverley, Queen Mary II, Caledonia, Jupiter, and Hebridean Princess. Bill brings his natural warmth and authenticity to the story of one of the Clyde's longest-serving captains.

The most feared ship in Britain’s West Africa Squadron, His Majesty’s brig Black Joke was one of a handful of ships tasked with patrolling the western coast of Africa in an effort to end hundreds of years of global slave trading. Sailing after the spectacular fall of Napoleon in France, yet before the rise of Queen Victoria’s England, Black Joke was first a slaving vessel itself, and one with a lightning-fast reputation; only a lucky capture in 1827 allowed it to be repurposed by the Royal Navy to catch its former compatriots.

During the summer of 1776, a British incursion from Canada loomed. In response, citizen soldiers of the newly independent nation mounted a heroic defense. Patriots constructed a small fleet of gunboats on Lake Champlain in northern New York and confronted the Royal Navy in a desperate three-day battle near Valcour Island. Their effort surprised the arrogant British and forced the enemy to call off their invasion.

The Battle of the Coral Sea was a major naval conflict which took place a month before the Battle of Midway. Because Midway is regarded as the turning point in the war in the Pacific, Coral Sea is seldom given the respect it deserves. This view fails to take into account the strategic victory that the Allies enjoyed over their powerful, more experienced Japanese foe.

Dr. Jordan B. Smith, Jr. became the first African-American to become the Color Company Commander at the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis or USNA) in 1976. The Class of 1976 African Americans set the pathway for changes, by demonstrating that Blacks and other minorities had earned the right to be in Annapolis. The incidents and events are authentic. This audiobook is about one of the Black men who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1976.

Admiral George Dewey: The Life and Legacy of the Most Decorated Naval Officer in American History chronicles the foremost American military hero of the late 19th century. You will learn about Admiral Dewey like never before.

Sandwiched between the Revolution and the Civil War, the War of 1812 is one of America’s forgotten conflicts, and the stalemated nature of the war (which resolved virtually none of either side’s war aims) has also ensured that it is often given merely a cursory overview. Under President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) and James Madison (1809-1817), the United States tried to steer a course that would keep it from being drawn into the European war and defend its neutrality on the high seas.

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.

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.

The greatest controversy in the history of the US Navy of the early American Republic was the revelation that the son of the Secretary of War had seemingly plotted a bloody mutiny that would have turned the US brig Somers into a pirate ship. The plot discovered, he and his coconspirators were hastily condemned and hanged at sea.