Naval War

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.

On January 24, 1915, a German naval force commanded by Admiral Franz von Hipper conducted a raid on British fishing fleets in the area of the Dogger Banks. The force was engaged by a British force, which had been alerted by a decoded radio intercept. The ensuing battle would prove to be the largest and longest surface engagement until the Battle of Jutland the following summer.

On the morning of April 9, 1940, German forces occupied Denmark and invaded Norway, leaving Sweden as the only neutral country in Scandinavia. It was to this country, surrounded by Axis forces, that Captain H. M. Denham was posted as Naval Attaché, arriving after evading capture by the Nazi Wehrmacht in the summer. Over the course of the next five years Captain Denham used his position to covertly provide valuable intelligence to the British military. In Inside the Nazi Ring, Denham gives vivid accounts of his meetings with numerous important political and military figures.

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the Australian government sent five destroyers to beef up the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. HMAS Vendetta, Vampire, Voyager, Stuart and Waterhen were old ships, small with worn-out engines. Their crews used to joke they were held together by string and chewing gum; when the Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels heard of them, he sneered that they were a load of scrap iron.

Gallipoli: the mere name summons the story of this well-known campaign of the First World War. And the story of Gallipoli, where in August 1915 the Allied forces made their last valiant effort against the Turks, is one of infamous might-have-beens. If only the Allies had held out a little longer, pushed a little harder, had better luck, Gallipoli might have been the decisive triumph that knocked the Ottoman Empire out of the First World War.

A pilot of calculated courage, "Trap" entered the Navy when test pilots were more like stuntmen than engineers. Airplanes had not yet come into their own as weapons of war, and they had an undeveloped role in the fleet. His vision and leadership shaped the evolution of naval aviation through its formative years and beyond. When the threat of war in 1940 raised an alarm over the Navy's deficiency in aircraft - especially fighters - Trap was appointed to lead the Flight Test Section to direct the development of all-new Navy airplanes.

Kenneth Earl might have never left Cherry Street—if it weren’t for a mother’s inspiration. Achieve your own greatest potential through the lens of Illegitimate Sun, the true spy memoir of Kenneth Earl, a man who overcame a difficult start in life to serve his country and work with top CIA, FBI, and military counterintelligence and law enforcement officials in the spy world. Motivational and inspiring, this incredible story of a mother’s wisdom, self-discipline, triumph, and intrigue will help you crack the code to life’s most important lessons.

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.

5 August 2005. While conducting a secret mission thirty miles off the remote cost of Kamchatka, the Russian Navy submarine AS-28 became snared in the thick cables anchored to 60-tonne concrete blocks. Without power the stricken boat sunk to the seafloor. Trapped too deep to escape her crew now had just seventy two hours before the air onboard ran out. Twenty-four hours later - still haunted by the loss of the Kursk - the Russian Navy requested assistance.

Winston Churchill once remarked that the only threat to truly frighten him was the peril of Nazi U-boats. Over the course of World War II, Germany’s submariners sank over three thousand Allied ships, nearly three-quarters of Allied shipping losses in all theaters of the war. In the process the submariners endured horrific conditions and suffered a 75 percent death rate, the highest of any arm of service in the conflict. In Wolfpack, historian Roger Moorhouse tells the story of the Battle of the Atlantic from the point of view of the German submariners.

On December 7, 1941, even as Japanese carrier-launched aircraft flew toward Pearl Harbor, a small American cargo ship chartered by the army reported that it was under attack from a submarine halfway between Seattle and Honolulu. After that one cryptic message, the humble lumber carrier Cynthia Olson and her crew vanished without a trace, sparking one of the most enduring nautical mysteries of the war. What happened to the ill-fated ship? What happened to her crew?

England is at peace, it is uncharted waters for Donland and his command. He must navigate between alliances in the midst of spies and their schemes. Fast, heavily armed frigates are being built using the plans of the American’s Constitution. Donland is unaware of the ships as he shepherds a transport to The Falklands. It is only when Sumerford comes aboard Oxford, that Donland suspects he is a pawn in yet another of Sumerford’s schemes. Donland is wary, but little does he know that a plan is unfolding that includes him in the destruction of the frigates. The French know that Sumerford ...

Author Stephen Young - a seaman on the battleship Oklahoma when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor - recounts his terrifying experience with incredible realism.

After the Battle of Midway, the Japanese were forced into the position of trying to defend the territory they had previously taken; their dreams of expanding their acquisitions and becoming the dominant power in the Pacific were gone. The tide of war in the Pacific had shifted.

While the Civil War is mainly remembered for its epic battles between the Northern and Southern armies, the Union was simultaneously waging another campaign - dubbed "Anaconda" - that was gradually depriving the South of industry and commerce, thus rendering the exploits of its field armies moot. When an independent Dixie finally met the dustbin of history, it was the North's coastal campaign, as much as the achievements of its main forces, that was primarily responsible.

On 8th June 1940, the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and her two destroyer escorts HMS Ardent and Acasta were sighted by the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst and her sister ship Gneisenau. In a brutal gun battle that lasted over an hour, all British ships were sunk and more than 1500 men lost their lives. Why had Glorious left the main troop convoy to proceed independently? Why was she so lightly protected? Why did British Intelligence give no warning that the German battlecruisers were close by?

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.

Have you ever served in the US Navy? Do you know someone who has? Have you ever wondered what shipboard life was like? Then this is the audiobook for you! The author served in the US Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer, in the waning days of the Cold War. In this series of 62 Sea Stories, he takes us on an enjoyable journey back to that very different time in US Navy history. He tells it like it was, and no one is spared. Some of the stories are hilarious. Some are tragic. Some are a sobering reminder of the dangers, difficulties, and stresses of naval sea service.

A hundred and fifty years ago, naval warfare entered a new phase with the introduction of ironclad vessels. On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor, prototype of this new class of warships, fought the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, Virginia, after the Virginia had ravaged the Union fleet blockading the James River, sinking larger, seemingly more powerful wooden warships in a potent demonstration of the power of an armored, heavily-gunned, steam-powered warship.

Mission: Five days to destroy the enemy in the Caribbean before a catastrophic weapon is unleashed—but all he can think about is the woman he left behind… The deadliest nerve gas ever made has fallen into the hands of a murderous Caribbean drug cult. The criminal 252 Syndicate has the gas in a secret lab on an oil rig servicing ship, but the ship has been taken for ransom by the Salinas Cartel in a violent drug war. The U.S. can’t use airstrikes and calls on Coast Guard Officer Ben Wyporek to lead his crew through a risky covert raid on the Salinas cult’s fortified island base. He ...