Naval War Fiction

Reeling from her last knock-down, drag-out with Japan’s mighty combined fleet – the Kido Butai – USS Enterprise limps back to Pearl Harbor for repairs and refitting. And like the battle-hardened warriors who live and work inside her, this gallant lady will return to the fight even stronger… but it can’t happen too soon.

Off the shore of Costa Rica, the Navy command ship USS Coronado launches an all-out assault against one of the most powerful drug lords in Central America. The high-tech fist of the US military is poised to come down like a sledgehammer. Everything is going according to plan until the quiet jungle erupts in a chaos of blood, shrapnel, and fire. When CIA operative Rick Holden and Naval Intelligence Officer Laura Peters begin investigating the circumstances of the ambush, they uncover something much more sinister than a failed military operation.

Guadalcanal, the largest island in the Solomons, is being occupied by the Imperial Japanese Navy. As a new airfield nears construction, the United States Navy and Marine Corps know they must act quickly or the entire course of the war could swing in Japan’s favor. As a massive invasion force gathers, Art Turner and the decorated crew of USS Bull Shark are once again sent on a secret mission. The clock is ticking, and Turner, his Marine Raiders, and the Bull Shark herself must face aircraft carriers, marauding Japanese soldiers, and a deadly jungle before time runs out!

USS Bull Shark is running for Pearl Harbor after leaving New London and her victory over the Nazi Q-ship, but all is not well aboard the boat. The Japanese are planning a major offensive and the clock is rapidly ticking – with what will become one of the most decisive battles of the war looming on the horizon, the Navy still doesn’t know exactly where or when it’s going to happen. Can Bull Shark play her part in the Battle of Midway? Or will she meet with Yamamoto’s secret weapon and be swept aside in Japan’s quest for power?

December 7, 1941 - America is attacked by the Japanese and dragged into a worldwide struggle for power unlike anything ever seen on Earth. While the United States and the Navy reel from the devastation of Pearl Harbor, the Nazis begin a brutal campaign within sight of the shores of the nation. U-boats prowl the American coast from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, sinking shipping seemingly unopposed!

There’s a super storm brewing out in the Pacific… one that will change the course of history forever… After three successful raids on Japanese outposts, the men and pilots of USS Enterprise are ready to get out there and hit Tojo once more. However, something dark and dangerous lies on the horizon… but before they face that storm, the U.S. Navy and Army has a delivery to make… right to Hirohito’s front porch!

The marines have seized control of the Japanese airfield on Guadalcanal, but this isn’t the end of their troubles…it’s only the beginning. The Japanese bomb them by day, attack from the forbidding darkness of the jungles by night, and their ships, like hungry sharks, prowl just offshore after the sun goes down. Whoever controls the canal controls the war. The Japanese know this, so they concoct a plan to send men and equipment ashore using fast destroyers—ships that can come by night and leave before the Cactus Airforce or Admiral Fletcher’s carrier planes can stop them.

After a devastating attack by a downed Japanese aircraft, Art Turner and the men of Bull Shark try to forget and relax in the rustic Western Australian port of Fremantle. Yet war is never far away, and the battle cry once more draws the submarine into danger. Uncle Charlie Lockwood has a special side mission for Art Turner. A British commando needs to get to Timor and reunite with the Australian guerrilla fighters he’s trained… and who he was forced to leave behind when the Japanese invaded.

After a series of failed assaults on Guadalcanal and Henderson Field, Japan is rallying for a major offensive. Ground troops, surface bombardment, and a carrier-supported invasion of the island looms darkly on the horizon. Now, Bull Shark must circle the nearby islands to discover and slow down this onslaught long enough for Allied forces to dig in.

Bull Shark and S-52 have just attacked a large bombardment fleet off the coast of Guadalcanal. And although they didn’t stop Henderson from being shelled, they might have at least curtailed it. Yet the Japanese are undaunted and more determined than ever…and the Empire has its sights set on some of its most deadly foes.

Art Turner and the crew of USS Bull Shark are about to become the spearhead in a new offensive in the Pacific. As an island nation, the Empire of Japan depends on the sea to maintain its vital supply chain… and it’s into this jugular that Admiral Nimitz intends to plunge his knife. On the other side of the world, Pat Jarvis is given command of his brand new submarine – the Megalodon. And like her sister, this new shark is being sent on a special mission. To find and sink a rogue Nazi spy ship commanding U-boat forces in the Caribbean.

While Art Turner and the men of USS Bull Shark struggle in the Pacific against the Japanese and against their own inner demons, Captain Pat Jarvis and the men of USs Megalodon have a German tiger by the tail in the Caribbean… and it’s only a matter of time before he rips them to pieces.

It's Montgomery's war now. Brash and unconventional, Mike Montgomery is hardly regulation Navy. At his side, Diane Martinson, the Chief of Staff's wife - smart, tough...and his lover. Under his command, the USS Goldsborough - a World War II-era destroyer thundering toward a showdown of water and fire. With the arrival of P. T. Deutermann-retired Navy captain, former arms control negotiator within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and ex-commander of at destroyer squadron - today's naval thriller just climbed to a whole new level.

The year 1941: Andrew Troost, heir to generations of naval tradition, has just been made admiral, when reports fly in of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Troost's son, Warren, has followed in his footsteps and is one of the men fighting for his country on a PT boat in the Pacific. In New York City, Tony Trapasso hears the call to action and gets ready to join the naval action. With him is Jacob Miller, a young man choosing to become a naval pilot instead of following the rabbinical calling of his Jewish forebears.

Laura, an impoverished Cornish girl, meets her husband when they are both in service in Teignmouth in 1916. They have a baby, Charles, but Laura's husband returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave her a widow. In a small, class-obsessed town she raises her boy alone, working as a laundress and gradually becomes aware that he is some kind of genius.

Commander Tony Romella takes a small team on what is expected to be a routine one month trip to Casablanca, Morocco. Their mission is simply to provide a temporary Top Secret special intelligence communications center to support U.S. members of a high level Allied war planning meeting. An easy mission quickly goes awry. Only two months after the Allied assault and occupation of Casablanca (Operation TORCH), the city remains a hotbed of Vichy and German sympathizers and spies. One unexpected event leads to another. Things get dicey, with life threatening situations, shots fired and dead bodies.

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 same for the deadliest, most pivotal naval campaign of the Pacific war: Guadalcanal. Neptune’s Inferno is at once the most epic and the most intimate account ever written of the contest for control of the seaways of the Solomon Islands.

Captain Carlisle hails from Virginia, a loyal colony of the British Crown. As the clouds of war gather, Carlisle's small frigate is ordered to Toulon on a reconnaissance mission. If battling the winter weather in the Gulf of Lions is not a sufficient challenge, Carlisle must also juggle the delicate diplomatic issues in this period of pre-war tension while contending with an increasingly belligerent French frigate. But Carlisle has additional problems unique to his colonial origins.

Three mismatched troop transports, lots of 29-foot barges, and an under-strength regiment of foot - a waste of Royal Navy money, a doomed experiment, or a new way to bedevil Napoleon's army in Italy? Either way, it's Capt. Sir Alan Lewrie's idea, and it seems to be working, with successful raids all along the coast of Calabria. But it depends on timely information, and Lewrie must trust Don Julio Caesare, a lord of a Sicilian criminal underworld, and his minions, or the amateur efforts of a disorganized network of Calabrian partisans.

1917 was a terrible time for the British Navy and Mercantile marine. The German adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare was sinking British and Empire shipping at an unsustainable rate, hundreds of thousands of tons were being sunk each month. It was necessary for the war-fighting techniques and the organisation at Admiralty to change to meet this new threat.