Naval War

His Majesty's Submarine Unbeaten was last heard from via a signal sent to Flag Officer Submarines on November 1, 1942. The signal simply stated: "Operation Bluestone completed". After this date the 58-meter British U-Class submarine inexplicably disappeared. Unbeaten was fully operational for just over two years. During its short tenure, Unbeaten successfully returned to war-torn Malta many times, symbolically flying its Jolly Roger.

In a tour-de-force of document sleuthing and insights gleaned from the excavation of a remarkable vessel, distinguished Civil War-era historian Tom Chaffin presents the most thorough telling of the H. L. Hunley's story possible. Of panoramic breadth, this Civil War saga begins long before the submarine was even assembled and follows the tale into the boat's final hours and through its recovery in 2000.

Although previously undervalued for their strategic impact because they represented only a small percentage of total forces, the Union and Confederate navies were crucial to the outcome of the Civil War. In War on the Waters, James M. McPherson has crafted an enlightening, at times harrowing, and ultimately thrilling account of the war’s naval campaigns and their military leaders. McPherson recounts how the Union navy’s blockade of the Confederate coast, leaky as a sieve in the war’s early months, became increasingly effective as it choked off vital imports and exports.

Admiral Bertram Ramsay may not be the most familiar World War II commander, but he was critical to the Allied victory. He orchestrated the dramatic evacuation of British expeditionary forces at Dunkirk, planned the invasions of North Africa and Sicily, and worked closely with General Dwight Eisenhower on Operation Neptune, the Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy. In this magisterial biography, over a decade in the making, Andrew Gordon captures Ramsay’s complex, conflicted nature.

On 27 October 1942, four "Long Lance" torpedoes fired by the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo exploded in the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). Minutes later, the ship that had launched the Doolitte Raid six months earlier slipped beneath the waves of the Coral Sea 100 miles northeast of the island of Guadalcanal and just north of the Santa Cruz Islands, taking with her 140 of her sailors. With the loss of Hornet, the United States Navy now had one aircraft carrier left in the South Pacific.

Shortly after midnight on July 30, 1945, the navy cruiser USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea. The ship had just left the island of Tinian, delivering components of the atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima. As the torpedoes hit, the Indianapolis erupted into a fiery coffin, sinking in less than 15 minutes and leaving 900 crewmen fighting for life in shark-infested waters.

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.

A long-overdue history of America's "forgotten flattop". On November 24, 1943, a Japanese torpedo plunged into the starboard side of the American escort carrier USS Liscome Bay. The torpedo struck the thin-skinned carrier in the worst possible place the bomb storage area. The resulting explosion could be seen 16 miles away, literally ripping the Liscome Bay in half and killing 644 of the crew. In terms of lives lost, it was the costliest carrier sinking in United States naval history. Liscome Bay's loss came on its first combat operation.

On the fourth of July, 1942, four Allied ships traversing the Arctic separated from their decimated convoy to head further north into the ice field of the North Pole, seeking safety from Nazi bombers and U-boats in the perilous white maze of ice floes, growlers, and giant bergs. Despite the risks, they had a better chance of survival than the rest of Convoy PQ-17, a fleet of 35 cargo ships carrying $1 billion worth of war supplies to the Soviet port of Archangel - the limited help Roosevelt and Churchill extended to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to maintain their fragile alliance.

Americans had few things to celebrate during the Barbary Wars or the War of 1812, but one of them was the growing prestige of the US Navy, and among those who were instrumental in its development, few were as influential as Stephen Decatur, Jr. Decatur had an impact on nearly every war America fought in between the 1780s until his death in 1820, and his stardom ensured that he was a fixture among Washington, DC's elite in his own lifetime.

Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship, volume 18 in the Tom Swift series, finds our hero building an airship - but not just any airship: this is a battleship of the air, complete with cannons, bombs, and able to stay in the air for at least two weeks on a single tank of gas. It is no surprise that the Swift shops are soon infested with spies and evildoers bent on stealing Tom's ideas, and even better yet, his airship. Will the forces of evil steal Tom's airship and his ideas? Tune in and find out.

Having Seaman Jenna as the mascot on the USS Vandegrift was never meant to be a statement or symbolic act, or to put the crew on the radars of four-star admirals. Jenna came aboard unannounced, a Christmas gift that brought instant joy to the crew and transformed a gray ship into a home for 225 sailors. Her addition was not pre-approved by the chain of command—contrary to military protocol. Before long, Jenna became a phenomenon—the only dog on a Navy ship since World War II—despite the best efforts to keep her from the public eye.

Bluejackets in the Blubber Room explores key events in US maritime history from the 1820s to the end of the Civil War through the biography of the sailing ship William Badger.

"Top Secret" mystery missions, many without other ships in support, were becoming uncomfortably familiar for the crew of the USS Nashville CL43. It started like a Hollywood thriller, secretly transporting from England $25 million in British gold bullion, delivered to the ship in unguarded bread trucks, a pre-war "Neutrality Patrol" that was really an unofficial hostile search for the far bigger and more powerful German battleship Prinz Eugen, and sneaking through the Panama Canal at night with the ship’s name and hull number covered for secrecy.

In the hours before dawn on 6th June 1944, an unprecedented assemblage of men, weapons, and machines swung into action.The long-awaited, highly secret D-Day invasion had begun. By the end of the day, the mission to liberate Europe would have made its most crucial advance. This book marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day through a rich account of the invasion and its aftermath. Drawing on the unparalleled collections of IWM, it reconstructs the historic landings and the subsequent battle for a foothold in Normandy.

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.

When the US entered World War I in April 1917, America’s sailors were immediately forced to engage in the utterly new realm of anti-submarine warfare waged on, below and above the seas by a variety of small ships and the new technology of air power. The US Navy substantially contributed to the safe trans-Atlantic passage of a two million man Army that decisively turned the tide of battle on the Western Front even as its battleship division helped the Royal Navy dominate the North Sea.

During the Civil War, both sides believed that whoever controlled the Mississippi River would ultimately be victorious. Cotton exports generated much-needed revenue for the Confederacy, and the Mississippi was also the main conduit for the delivery of materials and food. Similarly, the Union sought to maintain safe passage from St. Louis, Missouri, to Cairo, Illinois, but also worked to bisect the South by seizing the river as part of the Anaconda Plan.

The unheralded story of how salvage helped the Allies win back North Africa. By the time America joined World War II, Edward Ellsberg had already earned his place as one of the world’s great marine salvage engineers, and his best-selling accounts of raising doomed submarines and histories of classic diving operations had made him a literary star.

Every Friday, Secretary Thomas Modly wrote a personal message to the entire department, regardless of rank. Those messages were called SECNAV Vectors. Each Vector was intended to clearly communicate his priorities and to establish a rapport with all levels of the organization. The subject of each Vector was inspired by ongoing events that occurred in real time. As these events unfolded, the secretary’s unyielding emphasis on being prepared for the unpredictable was proven to be prescient as the navy found itself, unintentionally, in the center of the Covid-19 crisis.