Few subjects in naval history have elicited as much romance and disdain as the battlecruiser. And few subjects have gone so grossly misunderstood.

Fundamental errors regarding the battlecruiser's origins and the technology of the times continue to distort hindsight, obscuring the historical context of these powerful, majestic ships. Thunder in Its Courses clears away the misconceptions, with essays establishing the basic facts of the capital-ship cruiser as well as thorny issues regarding individual designs.

Richard Worth writes for the Warship and Warship International journals. His book titles include In the Shadow of the Battleship, Raising the Red Banner (with Vladimir Yakubov), On Seas Contested (edited with Vincent P. O'Hara and W. David Dickson), and Fleets of World War II.

Naval intelligence is one of the most vital, and sometimes decisive, forms of intelligence. Over the centuries, and with particular velocity over recent decades, the techniques of detecting and destroying military (and commercial) shipping have improved, leapfrogging the equally frantic race to keep ahead of them and safeguard the huge investments involved. Today the new challenges range from an increasingly aggressive strategy adopted by Pyongyang's submarine fleet and the exclusion of illegal immigrants heading for Australia and southern Europe to the capture of cocaine-laded submarines in the Caribbean and the interdiction of Somali pirates off the Gulf of Aden. Any accurate assessment of the comparative threat these activities pose is just as dependent on good intelligence today as it was to Admiral Lord Nelson in the days of sail. The Historical Dictionary of Naval Intelligence relates the long and fascinating history of naval intelligence through a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the organizations, operations, and events that made Naval intelligence what it is today.

The ""Interim"" LSM(R) or Landing Ship, Medium (Rocket) was a revolutionary development in rocket warfare in World War II and the U.S. Navy's first true rocket ship. An entirely new class of commissioned warship and the forerunners of today's missile-firing naval combatants, these ships began as improvised conversions of conventional amphibious landing craft in South Carolina's Charleston Navy Yard during late 1944. They were rushed to the Pacific Theatre to support the U.S. Army and Marines with heavy rocket bombardments that devastated Japanese forces on Okinawa in 1945. Their primary mission was to deliver maximum firepower to enemy targets ashore. Yet LSM(R)s also repulsed explosive Japanese speed boats, rescued crippled warships, recovered hundreds of survivors at sea and were deployed as antisubmarine hunter-killers. Casualties were staggering: enemy gunfire destroyed one, while kamikaze attacks sank three, crippled a fourth and grazed two more. This book provides a comprehensive operational history of the Navy's 12 original ""Interim"" LSM(R)s.

Those in peril on the waves
Few purchasers of this book will find themselves disappointed by its contents. It concerns naval disasters and, appalling as many of them are, they make compulsive reading. Shipwreck was no rare occurrence during the great age of sail and it came in many terrible forms exacerbated-during the long wars with France-by the intervention of an enemy. Britannia ruled the waves, so these incidents unfold in the freezing waters of the North Sea to the ice locked Polar regions and the steaming tropics of the Malay Peninsula. Brave ships came to grief in squalls, in fires, run aground on sands, dashed on rocks, crushed in ice and in compound accidents which will have the reader groaning with exasperation and sympathy for the crews who had to endure them. Here are tales of the Ajax, the Amphion, the Queen Charlotte, the Hindostan, the Venerable and many more. Every story is told in fascinating detail and includes first hand accounts by the survivors. Here are revealed feats of endurance, suffering and bravery by the sailors of the Royal Navy. Their ordeals include cannibalism, pirates, shark attack, treks across ice, imprisonment and every force Nature could contrive to hurl against them. This book is a must-particularly for those who are fascinated by the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.

Histories of all important and historically significant overseas U.S. naval and Marine Corps bases and facilities are presented alphabetically in this work. Those bases within a geographic area that permits (or permitted) overflight rights, port visits, and the use of offshore anchorages and including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam are included. Each entry discusses the form and function of the base or facility and gives something of its history and development. Bibliographies at the end of each entry provide sources for further research.

This book focuses on the theory and practice of maritime strategy and operations by the weaker powers at sea. Illustrated by examples from naval and military history, the book explains and analyzes the strategies of the weaker side at sea in both peacetime and wartime; in defense versus offense; the main prerequisites for disputing control of the sea; and the conceptual framework of disputing control of the sea. It also explains and analyzes in some detail the main methods of disputing sea control - avoiding/seeking decisive encounters, weakening enemy naval forces over time, counter-containment of enemy naval forces, destroying the enemy's military-economic potential at sea, attacks on the enemy coast, defense of the coast, defense/capturing important positions/basing areas, and defense/capturing of a choke point. A majority of the world's navies are currently of small or medium-size. In the case of a war with a much stronger opponent, they would be strategically on the defensive, and their main objective then would be to dispute control of the sea by a stronger side at sea. This book provides a practical guide to such a strategy. This book would be of much interest to students of naval power, maritime security, strategic studies and military/naval history.

Few if any 20th century warships were more justly acclaimed than the destroyers of the US Navy's Fletcher class. Admired as they were for their advanced and rakish design, it was their record as workhorses of the Pacific War that placed them among the most battle-tested and successful fighting ships of all time. This title describes the Fletchers and their Allen M. Sumner- and Gearing-class derivatives, their machinery, armament, and construction, with a listing of all 343 ships by hull number and builder. It features an operational history of the 287 ships commissioned during World War II, which traces the evolution of night surface action tactics in the Solomon Islands and the parallel development of the Combat Information Center; the drive across the Pacific and liberation of the Philippines with tables showing the rapid introduction of new squadrons; and the radar pickets' climactic stand against kamikaze aircraft at Okinawa. With summaries of losses and decorations and specially commissioned artwork, this is a definitive book on the wartime US destroyer classes.

This is the most comprehensive bibliography of the Spanish Armada of 1588 in recent years and the only up-to-date reference which provides a critical assessment of important source materials and an annotated bibliography of all genres of literature in Western languages. Eugene Rasor describes 1114 titles and is the first to assess the vast collection of writings that have accompanied the recent 400th anniversary of the Armada campaign. Cross-references from the narrative to bibliographical entries and a full index make the guide easy for researchers at all levels to use in their study of naval and European history. This authoritative reference covers one of the most important campaigns in naval history. The first part of the book consists of a narrative assessing the literature on the Spanish Armada in terms of background, history, leaders, preparations and tactics, and the consequences of the conflict. Source materials include all published books, monographs, official histories, government publications, dissertations, bibliographies, pertinent journals and periodicals and related articles, collections of archival and research sources and their locations, other significant holdings, published and broadcasted interviews, fiction, drama, and art. English, Spanish, French, Dutch and other Western languages are covered in a comprehensive manner, and both English and Spanish perspectives are presented carefully. The book also offers a short chronology. The index cites authors and subjects both.

European Navies and the Conduct of War considers the different contexts within which European navies operated over a period of 500 years culminating in World War Two, the greatest war ever fought at sea. Taking a predominantly continental point of view, the book moves away from the typically British-centric approach taken to naval history as it considers the role of European navies in the development of modern warfare, from its medieval origins to the large-scale, industrial, total war of the twentieth century. Along with this growth of navies as instruments of war, the book also explores the long rise of the political and popular appeal of navies, from the princes of late medieval Europe, to the enthusiastic crowds that greeted the modern fleets of the great powers, followed by their reassessment through their great trial by combat, firmly placing the development of modern navies into the broader history of the period. Chronological in structure, European Navies and the Conduct of War is an ideal resource for students and scholars of naval and military history.

With dozens of historical documents and over 400 photographs, the author not only presents a comprehensive history of U-boat crews and the undersea war, but also shows how those with an interest in the U-boat war can find U-boat-related artifacts and how they can trace many to specific boats - and then research what those boats and crews accomplished.

David Mearns has discovered some of the world's most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. From the mighty battlecruiser HMS Hood to the crumbling wooden skeletons of Vasco da Gama's 16th century fleet, David has searched for and found dozens of sunken vessels in every ocean of the world. The Shipwreck Hunter is an account of David's most intriguing and fascinating finds. It details both the meticulous research and the mid-ocean stamina and courage required to find a wreck miles beneath the sea, as well as the moving human stories that lie behind each of these oceanic tragedies. Combining the derring-do of Indiana Jones with the precision of a surgeon, in The Shipwreck Hunter David Mearns opens a porthole into the shadowy depths of the ocean.

This book discusses the role of the U.S. Navy within the country's national security structure during the first decade of the Cold War from the perspective of the service's senior uniformed officer, the Chief of Naval Operations, and his staff. It examines a variety of important issues of the period, including the Army-Navy fight over unification that led to the creation of the National Security Act of 1947, the early postwar fighting in China between the Nationalists and the Communists, the formation of NATO, the outbreak of the Korean War, the decision of the Eisenhower Administration not to intervene in the Viet Minh troops' siege of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, and the initiation of the Eisenhower "New Look" defense policy. The author relies upon information obtained from a wide range of primary sources and personal interviews with important, senior Navy and Army officers. The result is a book that provides the reader with a new way of looking at these pivotal events.

The twenty-first century has seen a sharp rise in privatization of the military, especially of logistics and security functions during the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The outbreak of Somali piracy that started in 2008 has prompted a similar revolution in maritime security. Private security companies began operating armed escort vessels to protect merchant shipping against pirates off the Horn of Africa. Private Anti-Piracy Navies is intended to provide a contextualized understanding of the historical origins, current state, and future prospects of this fast-changing sector. Centuries ago, the British East India Company used a private navy against piracy in the same waters with much success. Yet since then, international law has evolved to more tightly regulate the use of force by civilians, and to afford greater protections to suspected pirates. Thus, the development of what are in effect private warships has presented numerous legal and regulatory problems. How can the companies that operate these vessels be effectively licensed? Under what circumstances should they be allowed to use lethal force? This book explains how regulators in industry and government have attempted to answer such questions, and highlights the remaining areas of uncertainty. It also addresses the economic factors that drive the struggle between pirates and anti-piracy forces. Of equal concern are operational considerations such as defensive tactics, logistics, and rules of engagement. Security companies must carefully balance rights concerns against the need to defend ships effectively. Partly due to the contribution of private security, piracy in the Indian Ocean has dropped significantly over the past two years, leading to widespread overconfidence. Governments under severe budget pressure may withdraw their naval task forces from the region prematurely, leading to a resurgence of Somali piracy. At the same time, pirates are wreaking havoc in the Gulf of Guinea off West Africa. The book concludes with an assessment of private naval forces' prospects in these conflicts over the short term, as well as the implications for wider naval privatization in the long run.

World War II sent the youth of the world across the globe in odd alliances against each other. Never before had a conflict been fought simultaneously in so many diverse landscapes on premises that often seemed unrelated. Never before had a conflict been fought in so many different ways - from rocket attacks on London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya. It was only in time that these battles coalesced into one war. In The Second World Wars, esteemed military historian Victor Davis Hanson examines how and why this happened, focusing in detail on how the war was fought in the air, at sea, and on land-and thus where, when, and why the Allies won. Throughout, Hanson also situates World War II squarely within the history of war in the West over the past 2,500 years. In profound ways, World War II was unique: the most lethal event in human history, with 50 million dead, the vast majority of them civilians. But, as Hanson demonstrates, the war's origins were not entirely novel; it was reformulations of ancient ideas of racial and cultural superiority that fueled the global bloodbath.

This book looks at the transition of wooden sailing fleets to the modern steel navy. It details the technological breakthroughs that brought about this change - steampower, armour, artillery and torpedoes, and looks at their affect on naval strategy and tactics.
Part of the ever-growing and prestigious Warfare and History series, this book is a must for enthusiasts of military history.

At the beginning of the American Civil War the Federal government imposed a blockade of the southern coast of the Confederate States of America, including the ""dark corner of the Confederacy"" - Texas. Much of the fighting in Texas during the Civil War took place in the state's coastal counties and the adjoining Gulf of Mexico waters, and nearly all of these engagements were involved in one way or another with the Union blockade of the Texas coast.This book examines all major blockade-related land and sea engagements in and near Texas, and also includes many minor ones. It begins with a discussion of the blockade's creation and then concentrates on the successful Confederate efforts to evade the blockade by shipping cotton out of Mexico and, in return, receiving material and civilian goods through that neutral nation. The author also covers political intrigue and the spy activity with the French who had invaded Mexico. The book concludes with an analysis of the effectiveness of the Union blockade of Texas.

Like most foreign troops stationed in China, the United States Marines' mission was to protect the American embassy and American consulates, missionaries, tourists, and other citizens in China. During the half century covered by this book, the Marines saw China as it would never again be. The Opium Wars and Boxer Rebellion gave the Europeans a certain standing, with prerogatives and privileges that were looked upon by everyone, even the Chinese, as a natural order of existence. The author discusses early military operations in north China, the early legation guards, the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and the Marine legation guard in Peking also in 1900. It also discusses Seymour's relief column, Waller's column, the capture of the Walled City of Tien-Tsin, the siege of the legations at Peking, the relief of Peking, and the Marines' return to Peking.

Surgeon's Mate-The Diary of John Knyveton, Surgeon In The British Fleet During The Seven Years War 1756-1762. A detailed and bloody eye-witness account of a Naval Surgeon in the thick of military action. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

A unique and little-known chapter in World War II naval aviation history concerns the exploits of the scout-observation pilots who flew from the battleships and cruisers of the U.S. Navy. To carry out their missions, they were launched from their ships by catapult. On returning, their float-equipped aircraft landed on the water and the plane and crew were crane-hoisted aboard the vessel. In compiling this work, the author culled from the naval archives many of the ships' action reports and war diaries that detail the accounts of these airmen. In addition he meticulously edited the personal records of 27 veteran airmen who related stories of intense and excruciatingly difficult missions.

In 1779 the fledgling U.S. naval fleet suffered a catastrophic defeat against the British in the waters of the Penobscot Bay, losing forty ships in a battle that was expected to be a sure victory for the Americans. Commodore Dudley Saltonstall was blamed for the debacle and ultimately court-martialed for his ineptitude. In this groundbreaking book George E. Buker defends Saltonstall providing compelling evidence that he was not to blame for the loss and that in fact the court-martial was rigged against him. Buker s conclusions foster a reassessment of Saltonstall s naval strategies and shed new light on the political maneuvers of the time."

In the fall of 1943, armed with only his notebooks and pencils, Time and Life correspondent Robert L. Sherrod leapt from the safety of a landing craft and waded through neck-deep water and a hail of bullets to reach the shores of the Tarawa Atoll with the US Marine Corps. Living shoulder to shoulder with the marines, Sherrod chronicled combat and the marines' day-to-day struggles as they leapfrogged across the Central Pacific, battling the Japanese on Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. While the marines courageously and doggedly confronted an enemy that at times seemed invincible, those left behind on the American home front desperately scanned Sherrod's columns for news of their loved ones. Following his death in 1994, the Washington Post heralded Sherrod's reporting as "some of the most vivid accounts of men at war ever produced by an American journalist." Now, for the first time, author Ray E. Boomhower tells the story of the journalist in Dispatches from the Pacific: The World War II Reporting of Robert L. Sherrod, an intimate account of the war efforts on the Pacific front.

While fighting on land continues to hold center stage, recently much more attention has been focused on the Civil War at sea. And for good reason. Naval operations decided the outcome of the war as the North exploited its significant naval and maritime advantage to turn the war on land in its favor. In A Short History of the Civil War at Sea, Spencer C. Tucker, eminent naval and military historian and endowed chair at the Virginia Military Institute, provides a concise and lively overview of the "blue water" Civil War, or fighting on the seas and attacks directed from the sea. This volume covers the drama of significant naval battles, like the first clash of ironclads at Hampton Roads, the Union capture of New Orleans, fierce action in the Charleston Harbor, and the Battle of Mobile Bay. A Short History of the Civil War at Sea also discusses important themes, like the technological revolution in naval warfare; the impact of naval operations on U.S. and Confederate foreign relations; the Confederate use of torpedoes, submarines, and commerce raiders; and the Union's successful strategy of blockade. The struggle at sea might not have been as bloody as the fighting on land, but it was every bit as interesting and included a colorful cast of characters, like David G. Farragut, the North's highest ranking and most accomplished naval officer, and Confederate naval officer, commerce raider, and "Rebel Seadog" Raphael Semmes. And the advances of naval technology during the Civil War are fascinating-from the use of new Dahlgren guns to the design and redesign of the ironclads to the extensive use of mines and the development of submarines. Prof. Tucker covers it all in this new book, and his knowledge and skills as a storyteller shine. A Short History of the Civil War at Sea will entertain and inform students, scholars, and Civil War enthusiasts.

This book is about the theatre of power and identity that unfolded in and between Britain and Germany in the decades before the First World War. It explores what contemporaries described as the cult of the navy: the many ways in which the navy and the sea were celebrated in the fleet reviews, naval visits and ship launches that were watched by hundreds of thousands of spectators. At once royal rituals and national entertainments, these were events at which tradition, power and claims to the sea were played out between the nations. This was a public stage on which the domestic and the foreign intersected and where the modern mass market of media and consumerism collided with politics and international relations. Conflict and identity were literally acted out between the two countries. By focusing on this dynamic arena, Jan R??ger offers a fascinating new history of the Anglo-German antagonism.