By the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force. From the moment when the launching of HMS Dreadnought made every capital ship in the world obsolete overnight, we have been fascinated with these powerful surface combatants. Here Robert M. Farley looks at the history and folklore that makes these ships enduring symbols of national power - and sometimes national futility. From Arizona to Yamato, here are more than sixty lavishly illustrated accounts of battleships from the most well-known to the most unusual, including at least one ship from every nation that ever owned a modern battleship. Separate essays and sidebars look at events and lore that greatly affected battleships.

Previous studies of the American Navy's role in World War I have emphasized the combat and logistical tasks such as anti-submarine warfare, convoy protection, and the transportation of military supplies and troops to Europe. While these activities were of crucial importance in winning the war, the effort that involved the largest number of men was training. The Navy increased in size from about 59,000 men in late 1916 to nearly 530,000 by the end of the war in November 1918. In a brief 19 months, the Navy trained over 400,000 men. This story covers the three main divisions of enlisted training: the training stations, the reserve training camps, and the advanced or specialty schools, as well as an account of the building of the bases and changes in the curriculum.

Besch goes to great lengths to convey a sense of what life was like in the camps, stations, ships, and bases. In addition to all the major training locations, topics include: fleet, submarine, officer, and aviation training. Colleges and universities also played an important role in naval training. Sources for the study include archives from around the country, while stories drawn from diaries, letters, and oral histories add a personal element to the account.

" Constructed in 1923, the American submarine S39 was practically an antique when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. With defective torpedoes, a semi-trained crew, and a primitive ventilation system (hence the nickname), she nevertheless sank two enemy vessels and eluded pursuit to fight again in the Solomons. This is the little-known story of how an unprepared navy fought with what it had until the tide could be turned. Bobette Gugliotta was one of the S-39 wives. With the technical assistance of her husband, Guy, an officer who served on three of the S-class boats during the war, she presents an accurate and absorbing account of submarine operations and warfare. No less valuable is her candid and sympathetic portrayal of the men and women whose lives were caught up in the voyage of the S-39.

A New Naval History brings together the most significant and interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary naval history. The last few decades have witnessed a transformation in how this field is researched and understood and this volume captures the state of a field that continues to develop apace. It examines - through the prism of naval affairs - issues of nationhood and imperialism; the legacy of Nelson; the socio-cultural realities of life in ships and naval bases; and the processes of commemoration, journalism and stage-managed pageantry that plotted the interrelationship of ship and shore. This bold and original publication will be essential for undergraduate and postgraduate students of naval and maritime history. Beyond that, though, it marks an important intervention into wider historiographies that will be read by scholars from across the spectrum of social history, cultural studies and the analysis of national identity. -- .

Steve Bond is back with the final volume in this popular series. Unlike his previous three tomes, with their focus on air/rotorcraft, this book is uniquely dedicated to the personnel of the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) themselves. Each chapter will concentrate on the memories of contributors who served in a range of roles, including those below the flight deck. Accounts will focus on the everyday life upon an aircraft carrier as well as the extraordinary challenges faced during operations. There is a fascinating chapter covering exchange services with the RAF and other navies including the French and US; and also insight into the Indian navy’s experience with the Sea Hawk and Sea Harrier. Within the previous volumes, we met some remarkable characters and there is a chapter devoted to people’s memories of them. The closing section entitled ‘Thoughts’ sees contributors reflect on their FAA career with many deeply moving responses and discourses on the future of the service. The book is heavily illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with personal photographs from the contributors, artwork and tongue-in-cheek cartoons for which the FAA is famous. Volume Four is the perfect conclusion to the ongoing post-war story of a truly astounding branch of the armed forces.

Designed to locate and sink German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic, the escort carrier USS Bogue (CVE-9) became the most successful Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) carrier of World War II. This book covers the construction and commissioning of the Bogue, as well as the deployment of Naval Aviation composite squadrons that launched missions from the flight deck. Day-to-day operations are chronicled in comprehensive detail, along with developments in ASW tactics and the breaking of Germany's Enigma Naval Code, which enabled U.S. Navy forces in the Atlantic to take the offensive.

There are prominent unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) systems existing in the commercial marketplace today, but these systems have a relatively small role and presence in U.S. Navy application. This thesis suggests what existingcommercially available UUV system architectural attributes could be used now in U.S. Navy applications. After a survey of multiple existing commercial UUV systems, five of the prevalent systems in the marketplace were selected for analysis and comparison of their system architecture. This thesis included a comprehensive architectural analysis on seven specific architectural attributes of these UUV systems. Other UUV systems were also analyzed to support specific system architecture discussion. Major architecture considerations were made by the UUV system designers and likely drivers of existing system attributes were discussed as well as the benefits and disadvantages of these system attributes. Finally, based on the material and findings of the thesis, recommendations for a notional UUV system design and architecture for the U.S. Navy was presented.

The Destroyer Escort was the smallest ocean- going escort built for the United States Navy - a downsized destroyer with less speed, fewer guns, and fewer torpedoes than its big brother, the fleet destroyer. Destroyer escorts first went into production because the Royal Navy needed an escort warship which was larger than a corvette, but which could be built faster than a destroyer. Lacking the shipyards to build these types of ships in Britain, they ordered them in the US. Once the US unexpectedly entered World War II, its navy suddenly also needed more escort warships, even warships less capable than destroyers, and the destroyer escort was reluctantly picked to fill the gap. Despite the Navy's initial reservations, these ships did yeoman service during World War II, fighting in both the Atlantic and Pacific, taking on both U-boat and Japanese submarines and serving as the early warning pickets against kamikazes later in the war. They also participated in such dramatic actions as the Battle of Samar (where a group of destroyers and destroyer escorts fought Japanese battleships and cruisers to protect the escort carriers they were shielding) and the capture of the U-505 (the only major naval vessel captured at sea by the US Navy). The destroyer escorts soldiered on after World War II in both the United States Navy and a large number of navies throughout the world, with several serving into the twenty-first century. This book tells the full story of these plucky ships, from their design and development to their service around the world, complete with stunning illustrations and contemporary photographs.

Based on hitherto unused sources in English and Spanish in British and American archives, in this book naval historian Barry Gough and legal authority Charles Borras investigate a secret Anglo-American coercive war against Spain, 1815-1835. Described as a war against piracy at the time, the authors explore how British and American interests - diplomatic and military - aligned to contain Spanish power to the critically influential islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, facilitating the forging of an enduring but unproclaimed Anglo-American alliance which endures to this day. Due attention is given to United States Navy actions under Commodore David Porter, to this day a subject of controversy. More significantly though, through the juxtaposition of British, American and Spanish sources, this book uncovers the roots of piracy - and suppression- that laid the foundation for the tortured decline of the Spanish empire in the Americas and the subsequent rise of British and American empires, instrumental in stamping out Caribbean piracy for good.

Thousands of black sailors served with valor during the Civil War. Yet few histories have highlighted their significant contributions to the Union's impressive string of naval victories throughout the war, which prompted Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, to declare that if the army could not win the war, the navy would have to. Drawing on official naval records, personal letters and journals, and oral histories of formerly enslaved Americans, this volume documents the service of fugitive, freemen and freed black sailors, 1861-1865.

This edited volume focuses on the South Atlantic regional and national issues with maritime implications: naval policy, security, transnational organized crime, and Europe's legacy and current influence. The work analyzes the positions in favor and against NATO's extended role in the South Atlantic, the historical and current issues related to the Falklands War, the African national deficits, and initiatives to attend the regional maritime problems. Including contributions from Angolan, Brazilian, Senegalese, and US collaborators, the volume offers eclectic conceptual frameworks, rich historical backgrounds, updated data, original analysis models, and policy recommendations.

In recent times, international society has countered a myriad of 'outlaw' threats at sea, including piracy, terrorism, the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the threat posed by 'rogue states'. Whilst the US has promoted 'coalitions of the willing' and sought to transform international maritime law in response to these 'outlaws', Japanese governments have developed an innovative maritime security strategy centering on the Japan Coast Guard (JCG). Concerned by Japan's international image as a former imperialist power, Tokyo has relied upon the identity of the JCG as a law enforcement and rescue organization to garner support for its maritime security strategy. Japan's non-military efforts have developed the capacities of states and built institutions in the Southeast Asian region and beyond. The JCG's response to maritime 'outlaws' belies characterizations of Japan as a passive state that does not contribute to international order.

The history of the Scouts & Raiders of World War II is the story of the original ancestors of today's elite SEAL teams. As the Navy's first special warfare commandos these highly trained and skilled officer/enlisted boat crews conducted pre-assault recons of landing beaches, hydrographic recons, marked assault beaches, and guided in assault waves from 36-foot Scout boats, rubber boats, and kayaks at North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, Southern France, and Normandy, earning numerous decorations for heroism, including 8 Navy Crosses. In the Mediterranean, S&Rs trained elite units such as Rangers and the 1st Special Service Force, and were assigned to Special Operations Task Group 80.4 and the Adriatic Special Operations Group, working with Allied units supporting Tito's partisans.

In the Pacific, S&Rs served as Scout Intelligence Officers, Amphibious Scouts, Beachmasters, and with Underwater Demolition Teams with 5th and 7th Amphibious Forces from Kwajalein to Okinawa and in the Philippines campaign. They served in Admiral Milton Miles' U.S. Naval Group, China, training Nationalist Chinese guerrillas, participating in raids and ambushes and conducting behind-the-lines overland recons, disguised as coolies to escape detection by Japanese forces. Highly trained, skilled and brave, the Scouts & Raiders were the Navy's first special warfare commandos. This book will be useful for anyone interested in military/naval history, amphibious operations and special warfare. It tells, for the first time, the story of the Scouts & Raiders, a unique World War II unit.

A reappraisal of the late Victorian Navy, the so-called `Dark Ages', showing how the period was crucial to the emergence of new technology defined by steel and electricity. In purely naval terms, the period from 1889 to 1906 is often referred to (and indeed passed over) as the `pre-Dreadnought era', merely a prelude to the lead-up to the First World War, and thus of relatively little importance; it has therefore received little consideration from historians, a gap which this book remedies by reviewing the late Victorian Navy from a radically new perspective. It starts with the Great Near East crisis of 1878 and shows how itsaftermath in the Carnarvon Commission and its evidence produced a profound shift in strategic thinking, culminating in the Naval Defence Act of 1889; this evidence, from the ship owners, provides the definitive explanation of whythe Victorian Navy gave up on convoy as the primary means of trade protection in wartime, a fundamental question at the time. The book also overturns many assumptions about the era, especially the perception that the navy was weak, and clearly shows that the 1870s and early 1880s brought in crucial technological developments that made the Dreadnought possible.

The end of the Cold War has affected debates about maritime strategy, doctrine, operations and technology. What has emerged is an intellectual reconsideration of the theory and practice of maritime power. This volume focuses on the implications for western navies of shifts in strategic thinking, maritime doctrine, technology and naval roles.

The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) revolutionized warfare at sea, on land, and in the air. This little-known naval aviation organization introduced and operationalized aircraft carrier strike, aerial anti-submarine warfare, strategic bombing, and the air defence of the British Isles more than 20 years before the outbreak of the Second World War. Traditionally marginalized in a literature dominated by the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force, the RNAS and its innovative practitioners, nevertheless, shaped the fundamentals of air power and contributed significantly to the Allied victory in the First World War. The Development of British Naval Aviation utilizes archival documents and newly published research to resurrect the legacy of the RNAS and demonstrate its central role in Britain's war effort.

Heirs to a storied past and glamorized as modern-day knights, the Marine Corps--the elite fighting force in America's military--in fact has not always been so highly regarded. As Jack Shulimson shows, only a century ago the Corps' identity and existence were much in question.

Although the Marines were formally established by Congress in 1798 and subsequently distinguished themselves fighting on the Barbary Coast, their essential mission and identity remained unclear throughout most of the nineteenth century. But amid the crosscurrents of industrialization, technological change, professionalization, and reform that emerged I Gilded Age America, the Corps underwent a gradual transformation that ultimately secured its significant and enduring military role.

In this enlightening study, Shulimson argues that the Marine Corps officers' inextricable ties to the Navy both hampered and aided their attempt to define their own special jurisdiction and professional identity. Often treated like a poor relation, the Marine officers frequently found themselves in direct competition with their counterparts in the Navy and at times the object of the latter's scorn. Shulimson reveals the processes, politics, and personalities that converged to create these tense and sometimes embattled relations, but he goes on to show how Marine officers (with the Navy's blessing) eventually transcended their second-class role.

A detailed and riveting account of the U.S. Navy's greatest mutiny and its wide-ranging cultural and historical impact The greatest controversy in the history of the U.S. 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 U.S. brig Somers into a pirate ship. The plot discovered, he and his co-conspirators were hastily condemned and hanged at sea. The repercussions of those acts brought headlines, scandal, a fistfight at a cabinet meeting, a court martial, ruined lives, lost reputations, and tales of a haunted ship "bound for the devil" and lost tragically at sea with many of its crew. The "Somers affair" led to the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy and it remains the Navy's only acknowledged mutiny in its history. The story also inspired Herman Melville's White-Jacket and Billy Budd. Others connected to the Somers included Commodore Perry, a relation and defender of the Somers' captain Mackenzie; James Fenimore Cooper, whose feud with the captain, dating back to the War of 1812, resurfaced in his reportage of the affair; and Raphael Semmes, the Somers' last caption who later served in the Confederate Navy. The Curse of the Somers is a thorough recreation of this classic tale, told with the help of recently uncovered evidence. Written by a maritime historian and archaeologist who helped identify the long-lost wreck and subsequently studied its sunken remains, this is a timeless tale of life and death at sea. James P. Delgado re-examines the circumstances, drawing from a rich historical record and from the investigation of the ship's sunken remains. What surfaces is an all-too-human tale that resonates and chills across the centuries.

"Few ships in American history have had as illustrious a history as the heavy cruiser USS Portland (CA-33), affectionately known by her crew as 'Sweet Pea.' With the destructionof most of the U.S. battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor, cruisers such as Sweet Pea carried the biggest guns the Navy possessed for nearly a year after the start of World War II. Sweet Pea at War describes in harrowing detail how Portland and her sisters protected the precious carriers and held the line against overwhelming Japanese naval strength. Portland was instrumental in the dramatic American victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, and the naval battle of Guadalcanal--conflicts that historians regard as turning points in the Pacific war. She rescued nearly three thousand sailors from sunken ships, some of them while she herself was badly damaged. Only a colossal hurricane ended her career, but she sailed home from that, too. Based on extensive research in official documents and interviews with members of the ship's crew, Sweet Pea at War recounts from launching to scrapping the history of USS Portland, demonstrating that she deserves to be remembered as one of the most important ships in U.S. naval history.