Naval Military History

As heard on the New Yorker Radio Hour: The triumphant and "engaging history" (The New Yorker) of the young women who devised a winning strategy that defeated Nazi U-boats and delivered a decisive victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. By 1941, Winston Churchill had come to believe that the...

With The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Ship of Ghosts, James D. Hornfischer created essential and enduring narratives about America’s World War II Navy, works of unique immediacy distinguished by rich portraits of ordinary men in extremis and exclusive new information. Now he does the...

The legendary explorer of the Titanic shares inside stories of danger, suspense, and discovery - plus previously untold stories about his own dyslexia and how it has shaped his life.

A decade after the Cold War, a violent explosion sent the Russian submarine Kursk to the bottom of the Barents Sea. The Russians claimed an outdated torpedo caused the incident and refused help from the West while 23 survivors died before they could be rescued. When Russian naval officers revealed evidence of a collision with a US spy sub, Vladimir Putin squelched the allegations and fired the officers. In Spies of the Deep, W. Craig Reed shatters the lies told by both Russian and US officials and exposes several shocking truths.

A monumental retelling of world history through the lens of maritime enterprise, revealing in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, lake and stream, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world's waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human.

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner.

This book offers for the first time a balanced history of the naval war as a whole covering all participants in all major theaters. The author takes the listener beyond just those World War I operations staged on the North Sea to include the Italians and Austrians in the Adriatic; the Russians, Germans, and Turks in the Baltic and Black Seas; and the French and British in the Mediterranean. The book is also notable for its inclusion of now-forgotten strategies for naval operations that never materialized.

On a daring nighttime raid in September 2009, a team of Navy SEALs grabbed the notorious terrorist Ahmed Hashim Abed, the villainous "Butcher of Fallujah," the mastermind behind the 2004 murder and mutilation off our American contractors. In this no-holds-barred account, bestselling author Patrick Robinson reveals for the first time the entire story, from the night the SEALs stormed the al-Qaeda desert stronghold to the accusations and legaltwists and turns that followed to the cut-and-thrust drama in the court room where the fate of three American heroes hung in the balance.

Developed specifically for the Vietnam War, Swift Boats were versatile craft "big enough to outrun anything they couldn't outfight" but too small to handle even a moderate ocean chop, too loud to sneak up on anyone, and too flimsy to withstand the mildest of rocket attacks. This made more difficult an already tough mission: navigating coastal waters for ships and sampans smuggling contraband to the Viet Cong, disrupting enemy supply lines on the rivers and canals of the Mekong Delta, and inserting SEALs behind enemy lines.

Despite incredible political, military, and intelligence risks, and after six years of secret preparations, the CIA attempted to salvage the sunken Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 from the depths of the North Pacific Ocean in early August 1974. This audacious effort was carried out under the cover of an undersea mining operation sponsored by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

In November 1943, while on war patrol in the Makassar Strait, the USS Billfish submarine was spotted by the Japanese, who launched a vicious depth-charge attack. Explosions wracked the sub for 15 straight hours. With his senior officers incapacitated, diving officer Charlie Rush boldly assumed command and led key members of the crew in a heroic effort to keep their ship intact as they tried to escape.

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.

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.

On December 7, 1941, as the great battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie paralyzed and burning in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A crack team of U.S. Navy salvage divers headed by Edward C. Raymer are hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. Their two-part orders are direct and straightforward: (1) rescue as many trapped sailors and Marines as possible, and (2) resurrect what remains of America's once mighty pacific fleet. Descent Into Darkness tells their story.

A new history of the war that toppled the French Empire, unified Germany, and set Europe on the path to World War I Among the conflicts that convulsed Europe during the nineteenth century, none was more startling and consequential than the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Deliberately...

With a postscript describing SEAL efforts in Afghanistan, The Warrior Elite takes you into the toughest, longest, and most relentless military training in the world. What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented, intelligent young men volunteer for physical punishment, cold water, and days without sleep?

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?

Roy Adkins, with his wife, Lesley, returns to the Napoleonic War in The War for All the Oceans, a gripping account of the naval struggle that lasted from 1798 to 1815, a period marked at the beginning by Napoleon's seizing power and at the end by the War of 1812. In this vivid and visceral account, Adkins draws on eyewitness records to portray not only the battles but also the details of a sailor's life: shipwrecks, press-gangs, prostitutes, spies, and prisoners of war.

Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899-1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A brilliant engineer with a ferocious will and combative personality, he oversaw the invention of the world’s first practical nuclear power reactor. In this exciting biography, historian Marc Wortman explores the constant conflict Rickover faced and provoked, tracing how he revolutionized the navy and Cold War strategy.

In America's new war, the first guns in the fight are special operations forces, including the Navy SEALs, specially trained warriors who operate with precision, swiftness, and lethal force. In the constantly shifting war on terror, SEAL units - small in number, flexible, stealthy, and efficient - are more vital than ever to America's security as they take the battle to an elusive enemy around the globe. This is essential listening for anyone who wants to know what goes into the making of America's best warriors.