The aircraft carriers of the Sh�kaku class are generally regarded as being the most-successful carriers designed by the Imperial Japanese Navy. They became operational just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, and their combat records are impressive. Compared with the preceding aircraft carrier designs, they represented a great design leap, combining excellent striking power with good protection. Even by the US Navy these ships were rated highly. During the Pacific War the two ships of the class participated in all carrier battles with the exception of Midway, Sh�kaku being lost in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and Zuikaku off Cape Engaño (Battle of Leyte Gulf) in 1944. This is the history of their design and construction, and it relies heavily on Japanese source material and includes numerous photos and drawings.

Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty have become proverbial in their capacity to evoke the extravagant and violent abuse of power. But William Bligh was one of the least violent disciplinarians in the British navy. It is this paradox that inspired Greg Dening to ask why the mutiny took place. His book explores the theatrical nature of what was enacted in the power-play on deck, on the beaches of Tahiti and in the murderous settlement at Pitcairn, on the altar stones and temples of sacrifice, and on the catheads from which men were hanged. Part of the key lies in the curious puzzle of Mr Bligh's bad language.

A complete illustrated study of the German Kriegsmarine throughout World War II. Hamstrung at first by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, during the 1930s, the German Navy underwent a programme of rearmament in defiance of the restrictions, building modern warships under limitations which forced technological innovation. Submarines were strictly prohibited by the treaty, and yet, following years of covert development, they became one of the Kriegsmarine's most deadly weapons. Blooded in the Spanish Civil War, the surface ships of the Kriegsmarine went on to play a crucial role in the opening salvoes of World War II during the invasions of Poland and Norway, although serious losses here set back plans for the invasion of Britain, and by the end of the war, only a handful of surface vessels remained to be divided up among the Allies. From the beginning of the war, but especially after the fall of France, the dreaded and extraordinarily successful U-boats stalked the Atlantic, threatening vital British shipping convoys and choking off the lifeline of munitions and supply from the US. Once Italy and Japan entered the war, German naval operations expanded to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. This highly illustrated volume is a comprehensive study of the German Navy throughout the war, from pocket battleships to torpedo boats.

This book examines US naval strategy and the role of American seapower over three decades, from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. This study uses the concept of seapower as a framework to explain the military and political application of sea power and naval force for the United States of America. It addresses the context in which strategy, and in particular US naval strategy and naval power, evolves and how US naval strategy was developed and framed in the international and national security contexts. It explains what drove and what constrained US naval strategy and examines selected instances where American sea power was directed in support of US defense and security policy ends - and whether that could be tied to what a given strategy proposed. The work utilizes naval capstone documents in the framework of broader maritime conceptual and geopolitical thinking, and discusses whether these documents had lasting influences in the strategic mind-set, the force structure, and other areas of American sea power. Overall, this work provides a deeper understanding of the crafting of US naval strategy since the final decade of the Cold War, its contextual and structural framework setting, and its application. To that end, the work bridges the gap between the thinking of American naval officers and planners on the one hand and academic analyses of Navy strategy on the other hand. It also presents the trends in the use of naval force for foreign policy objectives and into strategy-making in the American policy context. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, maritime strategy, US national security and international relations in general.

The Washington Treaty of 1922, designed to head off a potentially dangerous arms race between the major naval powers, agreed to legally binding limits on the numbers and sizes of the principal warship types. In doing so, it introduced a new constraint into naval architecture and sponsored many ingenious attempts to maximise the power of ships built within those restrictions. It effectively banned the construction of new battleships for a decade, but threw greater emphasis on large cruisers. This much is broadly understood by anyone with an interest in warships, but both the wider context of the treaty and the detail ramifications of its provisions are little understood. The approach of this book is novel in combining coverage of the political and strategic background of the treaty - and the subsequent London Treaty of 1930 - with analysis of exactly how the navies of Britain, the USA, Japan, France and Italy responded, in terms of the types of warships they built and the precise characteristics of those designs. This was not just a matter of capital ships and cruisers, but also influenced the development of super-destroyers and large submarines. Now for the first time warship enthusiasts and historians can understand fully the rationale behind much of inter-war naval procurement. The Washington Treaty was a watershed, and this book provides an important insight into its full significance.

A fully illustrated history of how the US Navy destroyed Truk, the greatest Japanese naval and air base in the Pacific, with Operation Hailstone, and how B-29 units and the carriers of the British Pacific Fleet kept the base suppressed until VJ-Day. In early 1944, the island base of Truk was a Japanese Pearl Harbor; a powerful naval and air base that needed to be neutralized before the Allies could fight their way any further towards Tokyo. But Truk was also the most heavily defended naval base outside the Japanese Home Islands and an Allied invasion would be costly. Long-range bombing against Truk intact would be a massacre so a plan was conceived to neutralize it through a series of massive naval raids led by the growing US carrier fleet. Operation Hailstone was one of the most famous operations ever undertaken by American carriers in the Pacific. This book examines the rise and fall of Truk as a Japanese bastion and explains how in two huge raids, American carrier-based aircraft reduced it to irrelevance. Also covered is the little-known story of how the USAAF used the ravaged base as a live-fire training ground for its new B-29s -- whose bombing raids ensured Truk could not be reactivated by the Japanese. The pressure on Truk was kept up right through 1945 when it was also used as a target for the 509th Composite Squadron to practise dropping atomic bombs and by the British Pacific Fleet to hone its pilots' combat skills prior to the invasion of Japan.

"I am just one of many who experienced life on a submarine during World War II. Silent Running is a story sincerely told—free of any revisionism or cynicism—and I commend Vice Admiral Calvert for sharing this dramatic personal account of that difficult and exciting time." —President George Bush

"Hardened old sub vet that I am, I still felt the need for two weeks R&R after reliving Jim's only too realistic war patrolling adventures." —C. W. Nimitz, Jr., Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.)

"I believe it is the best personal account yet written on U.S. submarine operations in the Second World War. [Calvert] writes with lucidity and a rare candor. We get an extraordinary sense of what it was like, feeling the tensions and emotions, sharing the successes and disappointments, ... This is a true story with teal people, always gripping and sometimes tender. It is exciting to read and hard to put down. —J. L. Holloway, Admiral, USN (Ret.) President, Naval Historical Society, Chief of Naval Operations, 1974-1978.

"I knew Jim Calvert Throughout the war, and in this book he has told the submarine story in a way that catches the flavor and tang of the real thing. This is the way it really was." —Frederick B. Warder, Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.) Legendary W.W. II skipper of the Seawolf.

Keith B. Bickel challenges a host of military and strategic theories that treat particular bureaucratic structures, large organizations, and elites as the progenitors of doctrine. This timely study of how the military draws lessons from interventions focuses on the overlooked role that mid-level combat officers play in creating military doctrine. "Mars Learning" closely evaluates Marine civil and military pacification operations in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, and illuminates the debates surrounding the development of Marine Corps' small wars doctrine between 1915 and 1940. The result is compelling evidence of how field experience obtained before 1940 played a role in shaping the "Marine Corps' Small Wars Manual" and elements of doctrine that exist today. How the Marines organized lessons at that time provides important insights into how doctrine is likely to be generated today in response to post-Cold War interventions around the globe.

This book summarises the story of how RAF Coastal Command overcame the German U-boat danger during the Second World War and how the escalation of the U-boat war promoted the development of anti-submarine warfare, leading to victory over this menace in the Atlantic. At the start of the war, RAF Coastal Command had virtually no real chance of either finding or sinking Germany's submarines, but within a short period of time, new methods of detecting and delivering deadly ordnance with which to sink this underwater threat were dreamt up and implemented. It took the men of Coastal Command long hours patrolling over an often hostile sea, in all types of weather, but their diligence, perseverance and dedication won through, saving countless lives of both merchant and navy seamen out in the cold wastes of the Atlantic and contributing much to the final victory over Nazi Germany. This new addition to the Images of War series serves as a tribute to these men, recording their exploits in words and images.

Many books and articles have been written on wars in narrow seas. However, none deals in any comprehensive manner with the problems of strategy and conduct of naval operations. The aim of this book is to explain in some detail the characteristics of a war fought in narrow seas and to compare and contrast strategy and major operations in narrow seas and naval warfare in the open ocean..

This book explores the mingling of two rather different perspectives, those of the naval and aeronautical schools of thought, and the impact that they had upon one another in natural, professional and geopolitical settings. To explain the manner in which air power was incorporated into warfare between 1914 and 1945 it studies the deeds of practitioners, the limitations of technology, the realities of combat and the varying institutional dynamics and strategic priorities of the major maritime powers. It is underpinned by an appreciation of the geostrategic setting of the key maritime states, while addressing the challenges of operating in this multifaceted environment and the major technological developments which enabled air power to play an ever greater role in the maritime sphere. The potential for air power to influence warfare in the maritime environment was fully realised during the Second World War and its impact is demonstrated through an analysis of a wide range of the fleet operations and how it was utilised in the defence of trade and sea lanes. As such this book will be of interest to both naval and air power historians and those wanting a fuller perspective on maritime strategy in this period.

Dan van der Vat's naval histories have been acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as "definitive," "extraordinary," and "vivid and harrowing." Now he turns to the greatest naval conflict in history: the Pacific campaign of World War II. Drawing on neglected archives of firsthand accounts from both sides, van der Vat interweaves eyewitness testimony with sharp, analytical narration to provide a penetrating reappraisal of the strategic and political background of both the Japanese and American forces, as well as a major reassessment of the role of intelligence on both sides. A comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of the war in the Pacific, The Pacific Campaign promises to be the standard work on the U.S.-Japanese war for years to come.

The Turtle and the Dreamboat is the first detailed account of the race for long-distance flight records between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy less than fourteen months after World War II. The flights were risky and unprecedented. Each service intended to demonstrate its offensive capabilities during the new nuclear age, a time when America was realigning its military structure and preparing to create a new armed service - the United States Air Force. The first week of October 1946 saw the conclusion of both record-breaking, nonstop flights by the military fliers. The first aircraft, a two-engine U.S. Navy P2V Neptune patrol plane nicknamed the Truculent Turtle, flew more than eleven thousand miles from Perth, Western Australia, to Columbus, Ohio. The Turtle carried four war-honed pilots and a young kangaroo as a passenger. The second plane, a four-engine U.S. Army B-29 Superfortress bomber dubbed the Pacusan Dreamboat, flew nearly ten thousand miles from Honolulu to Cairo via the Arctic. Although presented as a friendly rivalry, the two flights were anything but collegial. These military missions were meant to capture public opinion and establish aviation leadership within the coming Department of Defense. Both audacious flights above oceans, deserts, mountains, and icecaps helped to shape the future of worldwide commercial aviation, greatly reducing the length and costs of international routes. Jim Leeke provides an account of the remarkable and record-breaking flights that forever changed aviation.

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.

In Sailors and Sexual Identity, author Steven Zeeland talks with young male sailors--both gay- and straight-identified--about ways in which their social and sexual lives have been shaped by their Navy careers.Despite massive media attention to the issue, there remains a gross disparity between the public perception of "gays in the military" and the sexual realities of military life. The conversations in this book reveal how known "gay" and "straight" men can and do get along in the sexually tense confines of barracks and shipboard life once they discover that the imagined boundary between them is not, in fact, a hard line.The stories recounted here in vivid detail call into question the imagined boundaries between gay and straight, homosexual and homosocial, and suggest a secret Pentagon motivation for the gay ban: to protect homoerotic military rituals, buddy love, and covert military homosexuality from the taint of sexual suspicion.Zeeland's interviews explore many aspects of contemporary life in the Navy including: gay/straight friendship networks the sexual charge to the Navy/Marine Corps rivalry the reality behind sailors'reputations as sexual adventurers in port and at sea men's differing interpretations of homoerotic military rituals and initiations sex and gender stereotypes associated with military job specialities how sailors view being seen as sex objectsEveryone interested in the issue of gays in the military, along with a general gay readership, gay veterans, and gay men for whom sailors represent a sexual ideal, will find Sailors and Sexual Identity an informative and entertaining read.Visit Steven Zeeland at his home page: http://www.stevenzeeland.com

Between the First and the Second World War, the U.S. Navy used the experience it had gained in battle to prepare for future wars through simulated conflicts, or war games, at the Naval War College. In Playing War John M. Lillard analyzes individual war games in detail, showing how players tested new tactics and doctrines, experimented with advanced technology, and transformed its approaches through these war games, learning lessons that would prepare them to make critical decisions in the years to come. Recent histories of the interwar period explore how the U.S. Navy digested the impacts of World War I and prepared itself for World War II. However, most of these works overlook or dismiss the transformational quality of the War College war games and the central role they played in preparing the navy for war. To address that gap, Playing War details how the interwar navy projected itself into the future through simulated conflicts. Playing War recasts the reputation of the interwar Naval War College as an agent of preparation and innovation and the war games as the instruments of that agency.

In many popular histories of the Pacific War, the period from the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor to the US victory at Midway is often passed over because it is seen as a period of darkness. Indeed, it is easy to see the period as one of unmitigated disaster for the Allies, with the fall of the Philippines, Malaya, Burma and the Dutch East Indies, and the wholesale retreat and humiliation at the hands of Japan throughout Southeast Asia. However, there are also stories of courage and determination in the face of overwhelming odds: the stand of the Marines at Wake Island; the fighting retreat in the Philippines that forced the Japanese to take 140 days to accomplish what they had expected would take 50; the fight against the odds at Singapore and over Java; the stirring tale of the American Volunteer Group in China; and the beginnings of resistance to further Japanese expansion. In these events, there are many individual stories that have either not been told or not been told widely which are every bit as gripping as the stories associated with the turning tide after Midway. I Will Run Wild draws on extensive first-hand accounts and fascinating new analysis to tell the story of Americans, British, Dutch, Australians and New Zealanders taken by surprise from Pearl Harbor to Singapore that first Sunday of December 1941, who went on to fight with what they had at hand against a stronger and better-prepared foe, and in so doing built the basis for a reversal of fortune and an eventual victory.

From popular Pacific Theatre expert Jeffrey R. Cox comes this insightful new history of the critical Guadalcanal and Solomons campaign at the height of World War II. His previous book, Morning Star, Rising Sun, had found the US Navy at its absolute nadir and the fate of the Enterprise, the last operational US aircraft carrier at this point in the war, unknown. This new volume completes the history of this crucial campaign, combining detailed research with a novelist's flair for the dramatic to reveal exactly how, despite missteps and misfortunes, the tide of war finally turned. By the end of February 1944, thanks to hard-fought and costly American victories in the first and second naval battles of Guadalcanal, the battle of Empress Augusta Bay, and the battle of Cape St George, the Japanese would no longer hold the materiel or skilled manpower advantage. From this point on, although the war was still a long way from being won, the American star was unquestionably on the ascendant, slowly, but surely, edging Japanese imperialism towards its sunset. Jeffrey Cox's analysis and attention to detail of even the smallest events are second to none. But what truly sets this book apart is how he combines this microscopic attention to detail, often unearthing new facts along the way, with an engaging style that transports the reader to the heart of the story, bringing the events on the deep blue of the Pacific vividly to life.

The accepted historical narrative of the Second World War predominantly assigns U-boats to the so-called 'Battle of the Atlantic', almost as if the struggle over convoys between the new world and the old can be viewed in isolation from simultaneous events on land and in the air. This has become an almost accepted error. The U-boats war did not exist solely between 1940 and 1943, nor did the Atlantic battle occur in seclusion from other theatres of action. The story of Germany's second U-boat war began on the first day of hostilities with Britain and France and ended with the final torpedo sinking on 7 May 1945. U-boats were active in nearly every theatre of operation in which the Wehrmacht served, and within all but the Southern Ocean. Moreover, these deployments were not undertaken in isolation from one another; instead they were frequently interconnected in what became an increasingly inefficient German naval strategy. This fascinating new book places each theatre of action in which U-boats were deployed into the broader context of the Second World War in its entirety while also studying the interdependence of the various geographic deployments. It illustrates the U-boats' often direct relationship with land, sea and aerial campaigns of both the Allied and Axis powers, dispels certain accepted mythologies, and reveals how the ultimate failure of the U-boats stemmed as much from chaotic German military and industrial mismanagement as it did from Allied advances in code-breaking and weaponry.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the greatest naval engagement in history. The battle was four separate actions, none of which were fought in the Gulf itself, and the result was the destruction of Japanese naval power in the Pacific. This book is a detailed and comprehensive account of the fighting from both sides. It provides the context of the battle, most obviously in terms of Japanese calculations and the search for "a fitting place to die" and "the chance to bloom as flowers of death." Using Japanese material never previously noted in western accounts, H. P. Willmott provides new perspectives on the unfolding of the battle and very deliberately seeks to give readers a proper understanding of the importance of this battle for American naval operations in the following month. This careful interrogation of the accounts of "the last fleet action" is a significant contribution to military history.

The 'ShipCraft' series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring colour profiles and highly-detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references - books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites.This volume covers the British 10,000-ton 'Treaty Cruisers', thirteen of which were built to three slightly varying designs between the wars. With three funnels and a high freeboard, they were impressive ships, and all enjoyed very active wartime careers - three were involved in the Bismarck action and another with the sinking of the Scharnhorst.

The military operations of Scandinavian societies in the Viking Age depended on their ships. Different types of ships were used in order to transport troops and war supplies. Some ships were designed to conduct the speedy transport of large numbers of troops, while others were specialised cargo vessels used in military operations as carriers of supplies and sometimes troops as well. This book examines the building and use of ships for warfare in 11th century Denmark. The subjects are addressed through detailed analyses of aspects such as resources, organisational structures and naval warfare. The outcomes are a more informed understanding of 11th century Scandinavian military organisation, shipbuilding and resource management.

A new illustrated history and analysis of Italy's World War II destroyers, a formidable foe for Allied forces attempting to attack the sea lanes between Italy and North Africa. The Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marine or RM) began the Second World War with one of the largest fleets in the world. Included in it was a total of 59 fleet destroyers, with others added during the war. These were a diverse collection of ships dating back to the First World War with large destroyers built to counter ships of similar size introduced in the French Navy (the RM's historical enemy), and medium-sized ships which constituted the bulk of the destroyer force. RM destroyers were built for high speed, not endurance since they were only expected to operate inside the Mediterranean. They were also well-armed, but lacked radar. During the war, RM destroyers fought well. With the exception of a small force based in Abyssinia which fought a series of battles in the Red Sea against the British, RM destroyers were active in the Mediterranean. The primary mission of the RM during the war was to keep the supply lines to North Africa open. The Italians were largely successful in this effort, and destroyers were key. RM destroyers were present at every fleet action with the British Mediterranean Fleet. The intensity of these actions is reflected by the fact that the RM lost 51 destroyers during the war.

Few events have ever shaken a country in the way that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor affected the United States. The Japanese forces then continued to overwhelm the Allies, attacking Malaya with its fortress of Singapore, and taking resource-rich islands in the Pacific in their own blitzkrieg offensive. Allied losses in these early months after America's entry into the war were great, and among the most devastating were those suffered during the Java Sea Campaign, where a small group of Americans, British, Dutch, and Australians were isolated in the Far East - directly in the path of the Japanese onslaught. It would be the first major sea battle of World War II in the Pacific.