A History of Seafaring in the Classical World, first published in 1986, presents a complete treatment of all aspects of the maritime history of the Classical world, designed for the use of students as well as scholars. Beginning with Crete and Mycenae in the third millennium BC, the author expounds a concise history of seafaring up to the sixth century AD. The development of ship design and of the different types of ship, the varied purposes of shipping, and the status and conditions of sailors are all discussed. Many of the most important sea battles are investigated, and the book is illustrated with a number of line drawings and photographs. Greek and Latin word are only used if they are technical terms, ensuring A History of Seafaring in the Classical World is accessible to students of ancient history who are not familiar with the Classical languages.

On 3 July 1940, soon after the collapse of the French front and France's request for an armistice, a reluctant Royal Navy commander opened fire on the French Navy squadron at Mers-el-Kebir. Some 1,300 French sailors lost their lives. The late David Brown's detailed account finally conveys an objective understanding of the course of events that led up to this tragedy. This new book makes extensive use of primary sources such as correspondence, reports and signals traffic, from the British Cabinet to the admirals, the commanders-in-chief and the liaison officers. It shows how the driving force behind this extraordinary event was the British government's determination that the French Fleet would never fall into the hands of the Axis powers. A combination of mistrust, dissembling, poor communications and outright enmity over the preceding month had catastrophic results, both for the individuals concerned and for the future of Franco-British naval relations.

The strategy of the British and French prior to World War II was to preserve the status quo after the disaster of World War I. Donald Stoker's book examines British and French involvement from 1919 to 1939 in the creation and development of the naval forces of Poland, Finland and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This is an in-depth scholarly study of a subject that should appeal to students of international history, strategy, international relations and naval history in general.

Great Britain's economic blockade of Germany in World War I was one of the key elements to the victory of the Entente. Though Britain had been the leading exponent of blockades for two centuries, the World War I blockade was not effective at the outbreak of hostilities. Pre-war changes had led to the Admiralty supplanting the Royal Navy's leadership role in favour of direction from the civilian branch of government on the basis of international law. The struggle between the primacy of international law and military expediency lasted for nearly two years, as the British tried to reconcile their pre-war stance as champion of neutral rights with measures necessary for a successful blockade. Not until 1916 did the operation have the potential to be a decisive factor in the defeat of Germany, when pressure from France, the Royal Navy, Parliament, British popular opinion, and the Admiralty forced the British government to abandon its defence of neutral rights over the interests of the state. The arrival of the United States as an ally in April 1917 initiated the final evolution of the blockade. The Entente and the United States tightened the blockade with crushing effect on Germany, and by November 1918, it was evidently one of the chief factors behind the victory. This knowledge reinforced the decision to retain the blockade in the months following the armistice in order to force favourable terms from Germany. In both the war and in the peace, the economic blockade performed a critical role in World War I.

This book examines the nature and character of naval expeditionary warfare, in particular in peripheral campaigns, and the contribution of such campaigns to the achievement of strategic victory. Naval powers, which can lack the massive ground forces to win in the main theatre, often choose a secondary theatre accessible to them by sea and difficult for their enemies to reach by land, giving the sea power and its expeditionary forces the advantage. The technical term for these theatres is 'peripheral operations.' The subject of peripheral campaigns in naval expeditionary warfare is central to the British, the US, and the Australian way of war in the past and in the future. All three are reluctant to engage large land forces because of the high human and economic costs. Instead, they rely as much as possible on sea and air power, and the latter is most often in the form of carrier-based aviation. In order to exert pressure on their enemies, they have often opened additional theaters in on-going, regional, and civil wars. This book contains thirteen case studies by some of the foremost naval historians from the United States, Great Britain, and Australia whose collected case studies examine the most important peripheral operations of the last two centuries. This book will be of much interest to students of naval warfare, military history, strategic studies and security studies.

With particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region, this book examines the rise and fall of sea powers. In the Asia-Pacific region there has been significant expansion of sea-based economies together with burgeoning naval power. Many claim that these processes will transform the world's future economic and security relationships. The book addresses the question of to what extent the notion of 'Asia rising' is reflected by and dependent on its developing sea power. A central theme is the Chinese challenge to long-term Western maritime ascendency and what might be the consequences of this. In order to situate current and future developments this book includes chapters which analyse what sea power means and has meant, as well as its role, both historic and contemporary, in the rise and fall of great powers. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian politics, strategic studies, war and conflict studies, IR and security studies.

This is the first published comprehensive survey of naval action on the Mississippi River and her tributaries for the years 1863-1865. Following introductory reviews of the rivers and of the U.S. Navy's Mississippi Squadron, chronological Federal naval participation in various raids and larger campaigns is highlighted, as well as counterinsurgency, economical support and control, and logistical protection. It includes details on units, locations, or activities that have been previously underreported or completely ignored. Examples include the birth and function of the Mississippi Squadron's 11th District, the role of U.S. Army gunboats, and the war on the Upper Cumberland and Upper Tennessee Rivers. The last chapter details the coming of the peace in 1865 and the decommissioning of the U.S. river navy and the sale of its gunboats.

This biography completes a trilogy on the three Navy fighter pilots--Jimmie Thach, Butch O'Hare, and Jimmy Flatley--who developed sweeping changes in aerial combat tactics during World War II. While O'Hare and Flatley were instrumental in making the "weave" a success, Thach was its theoretical innovator, and his use of the tactic in combat at Midway documented its practical application. This portrait of the famous pilot provides a memorable account of how Thach, convinced that his Wildcat was no match for Japan's formidable Zero, found a way to give his squadron a fighting chance. Using matchsticks on his kitchen table, he devised a solution that came to be called the Thach Weave. But as Steve Ewing is quick to point out, this was not Thach's sole contribution to the Navy. Throughout his forty-year career, Thach provided answers to multiple challenges facing the Navy, and his ideas were implemented service wide.
A highly decorated ace, Thach was an early test pilot, a creative task force operations officer in the last year of World War II, and an outstanding carrier commander in the Korean War. During the Cold War, he contributed to advances in antisubmarine warfare. This biography shows him to be a charismatic leader interested in everyone around him, regardless of rank or status. His dry sense of humor and constant smile attracted people from all walks of life, and he was a popular figure in Hollywood. Thach remains a hero among naval aviators, his most famous combat tactic still used by today's pilots.

Awareness of the leadership traits exhibited by Admiral Farragut in his famous order: "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" can make any manager afloat or ashore more successful. Alec Fraser's experience as a Navy captain and the president of a division of Turner Broadcasting has taught him that leadership ashore can be modeled after centuries of leadership at sea. In Damn the Torpedoes! Fraser utilizes his own experiences in the U.S. Navy and the corporate world to illustrate this concept. Within the first sixty seconds of his induction to the U.S. Naval Academy, Midshipman Fraser was posed with a question to which he answered, "I don't know." This quickly proved to be an unacceptable answer in the Navy, regardless of the question. While doing the requisite push-ups that followed, he learned that there were only four ways to respond to a question or an order: "No excuse, sir," "I'll find out, sir," "Yes/no sir," and "Aye-aye, sir." From these four responses Fraser learned the four key concepts to being an effective leader afloat or ashore: accountability, thinking ahead, ethics, and motivation. Damn the Torpedoes! offers concrete advice for leading in the work place--giving step-by-step recommendations to encourage readers into adopting this different way of approaching leadership. Providing a fresh and unconventional perspective, Captain Fraser gives personal and historic examples about the leadership traits of ship captains and suggests how leaders in any organization may adapt them to make their careers and businesses successful. According to Fraser, these four key leadership concepts are the basic principles necessary to prevent organizational chaos best summed up by a Wall Street Journal editorial on leadership at sea and ashore: "When men lose confidence and trust in those who lead, order disintegrates into chaos and purposeful ships into uncontrollable derelicts."

During World War II, the U.S. Navy swiftly expanded to include an array of vessels, from smaller yachts and fishing boats bought early in the war for patrol work to fast, modern commercial ships built to haul troops and supplies. After the Allied victory, this diverse fleet became unnecessary and the Navy sold many of its vessels. This comprehensive catalog documents the Navy ships and boats sold after the war and registered under the American flag for commercial or recreational purposes. Focusing on those vessels with names or clearly identifiable hull numbers and crew accommodations, it chronicles each craft's prewar ownership, wartime history, and postwar fate. The product of painstaking detective work in a wide-range of primary sources, this meticulous directory highlights an unexplored but illuminating aspect of U.S. maritime history.

Exploring British naval policy during the first two governments of Harold Wilson (1964-70), this book analyses how the Navy Department of the Ministry of Defence and the Navy's professional leadership dealt with six years of defence reviews, retrenchment and strategic re-orientation. This period witnessed a dramatic blow to the service's self image and self confidence as a result of the cancellation of the large CVA-01 aircraft carrier, and a gradual process of realignment, reorientation and adaptation to the changed political environment, resulting in a recovery of self-confidence, a new strategy and the approval in principle of a class of small aircraft carriers. Taking advantage of the recently released official records, the study highlights for the first time just how in practice Mountbatten managed to dominate the Chiefs of Staff machinery, and how his power was undermined and diminished. It also demonstrates that, contrary to widespread historical opinion, Denis Healey was not necessarily set against carrier air power from his arrival in office and was willing to consider the procurement of a medium carrier for the navy. Furthermore, the work highlights the importance of the Mediterranean in the rehabilitation and renewal of self-confidence by the navy in the late 1960s. Although focusing primarily on policy and strategic matters, the book incorporates wider historical consideration, reviewing other factors that influenced policy-making such as foreign policy, financial resources, materiel, manpower and recruitment, in addition to the administrative machinery and the cultural environment of the time. In so doing, Dr Hampshire offers a vivid insight into the interactions of government and military at a critical juncture in the changing nature of Britain's global role.

Patrol Wing Ten was the only U.S. Navy aviation unit to fight the Japanese in the early weeks of World War II, and the daring exploits of its PBY scout-plane pilots offer a dramatic tale of heroism, duty, and controversy. Poorly equipped and dead tired from flying back-to-back patrols with no fighter cover, the men lost sixty-six percent of their aircraft in just eight weeks as they took on an enemy that outnumbered them nearly 1,000 to one. This forceful narrative places the reader right in the midst of their courageous battle. Dwight Messimer's aggressive research on the topic has resulted in a work that provides moving details to their desperate but valiant acts against the seemingly invincible Japanese juggernaut that swept across the southwest Pacific at the opening of the war.
By Christmas Day in 1941, Patrol Wing Ten was forced to split into two groups, one fighting an air and sea campaign in Java, the other fighting as infantry on Bataan and Corregidor. Moving back and forth between the two groups, Messimer skillfully interweaves their experiences with the major events of the overall war. He uses material from the fifty survivors he managed to track down and deftly captures their ability to maintain a sense of humor in the face of overwhelming danger. The more than one hundred personal and official documents uncovered during years of research reveal new information relating to technical points about the planes, facts verified by the PBY crews that do not agree with popularly accepted ideas. To those who believe the wing accomplished nothing--and this group includes many pilots--Messimer argues that while attempts to bomb the Japanese fleet proved futile because the PBYs were unsuitable for such a task, the wing's rescue and evacuation missions saved many lives. The airdales themselves were not so lucky. When Corregidor fell, nearly half of them were captured and many died in captivity.

The British Pacific Fleet was formed in October 1944 and dispatched to fight alongside the USN in the Central Pacific under Admiral Nimitz. Deploying previously unpublished documents, this book reveals how relations between the UK and US forces developed from a starting point of barely repressed suspicion, to one where both navies came to understand each other and eventually find a remarkable bond. Born out of a shared experience of Kamikaze attacks, extended operations against bitterly hostile shores, the pooling of knowledge and experience, the two navies underpinned the diplomatic moves in both Washington and London. The book carries the legacy of this experience through to the next Anglo-American participation in war, Korea. It illustrates and explains how and why certain lessons were incorporated into the composition, behaviour and structure of the post-war Navy. It demonstrates the significance of what was learned from the USN by the RN and by USN from the RN. As well as examining the background to the largest fleet the Royal Navy ever put to sea, the book also charts its effects on Anglo-American relations, multinational operations, alliance building, and the ways naval forces are shaped by and in turn shape politics. It addresses a period of rapid technological development that witnessed profound changes in the international system, and which raised fundamental questions of what navies were for and how should they operate and organize themselves. In so doing the study illustrates how the experience of a few long months at the end of the war in the Pacific would cast a long shadow over these issues in the very different circumstances of the post-war world.

Clash of Fleets is an operational history that records every naval engagement fought between major surface warships during World War I. Much more than a catalog of combat facts, Clash of Fleets explores why battles occurred; how the different navies fought; and how combat advanced doctrine and affected the development and application of technology. The result is a holistic overview of the war at sea as it affected all nations and all theaters of war. A work of this scope is unprecedented. Organized into seven chapters, the authors first introduce the technology, weapons, ships, and the doctrine that governed naval warfare in 1914. The next five chapters explore each year of the war and are subdivided into sections corresponding to major geographic areas. This arrangement allows the massive sweep of action to be presented in a structured and easy to follow format that includes engagements fought by the Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Ottoman, and Russian Navies in the Adriatic, Aegean, Baltic, Black, Mediterranean, and North Seas as well as the Atlantic, India, and Pacific Oceans. The role of surface combat in the Great War is analyzed and these actions are compared to major naval wars before and after. In addition to providing detailed descriptions of actions in their historical perspectives, O'Hara and Heinz advance several themes, including the notion that World War I was a war of navies as much as a war of armies. They explain that surface combat had a major impact on all aspects of the naval war and on the course of the war in general. Finally, Clash of Fleets illustrates that systems developed in peace do not always work as expected in war, that some are not used as anticipated, and that others became unexpectedly important. There is much for today's naval professional to consider in the naval conflict that occurred a century ago.

This new book by Ron Willis and Tom Carmichael chronicles in full color the development of Navy wings, including variations in designation, design and makers from World War I to the present. Also included is a listing of 17,000 naval aviators by name and number up to 1942.

Naval Warfare 1919-45 is a comprehensive history of the war at sea from the end of the Great War to the end of World War Two. Showing the bewildering nature and complexity of the war facing those charged with fighting it around the world, this book ranges far and wide: sweeping across all naval theatres and those powers performing major, as well as minor, roles within them. Armed with the latest material from an extensive set of sources, Malcolm H. Murfett has written an absorbing as well as a comprehensive reference work. He demonstrates that superior equipment and the best intelligence, ominous power and systematic planning, vast finance and suitable training are often simply not enough in themselves to guarantee the successful outcome of a particular encounter at sea. Sometimes the narrow difference between victory and defeat hinges on those infinite variables: the individual's performance under acute pressure and sheer luck. Naval Warfare 1919-45 is an analytical and interpretive study which is an accessible and fascinating read both for students and for interested members of the general public.

The navies of China, India and to a lesser extent Japan are expanding rapidly at present. This has the potential to alter the US-dominated naval balance in Asia-Pacific but it also raises a question: are the region's powers involved in a naval arms race? Naval development is and always has been a crucial indicator of economic and political development. It shows the emergence of a significant shift in strategic weight from West to East. But within the Asia-Pacific Region, alongside growing economic and institutional integration, there are geo-political tensions that threaten the regions stability and peace. The balance between the two determines the form that naval development in that region is taking. Some aspects of this suggest the beginnings of a naval arms race that would have profound consequences for the region and the world.

The United States Navy has evolved in the last century and a half from humble and often frustrating beginnings during and after the Revolutionary War to become the strongest navy in the world with responsibilities that span the globe. The story of the Navy from its birth through the Civil War and other 19th century conflicts through its victories of World War I and World War II and down to the current efforts in the Middle East to maintain the peace not only for the United States but also for other nations as the world's primary peace-keeper has been one of responding to the call of duty, as captured by its unofficial motto Non sibi sed patriae ("Not self but country"). No other nation's navy past or present can match its successes and history. The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the United States Navy covers U.S. Naval developments, personnel, and engagements from the colonial times to the present day. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 600 cross-referenced dictionary entries on people, places, events and other terminology of the Navy. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the United States Navy.

A sharp analysis of Greek naval history in the 1910s, a time when the importance of its geographic position and its navy increased greatly. It explains the causes of these developments and their consequences for Greek national aims, the Mediterranean naval situation and the Balkan balance of power. Within this context, it also examines the competition between Britain, France, and Germany for Greek naval procurements and influence, Greek-Turkish naval tensions and the responses of the great powers. This volume also provides an in-depth analysis of the naval strategy, programme, education and organization of the Greek state and of the extent to which these were influenced by its own Naval Staff, British naval missions, and native and foreign politicians. It details the difficulties and rewards in the relationship of this rising naval power with Britain and other great naval powers of the time. This book will be of immense interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in naval history and strategy.

This is a study of the impact of inter-war naval arms control policy-making on the domestic politics of Japan, especially the areas of civil-military, inter-military (Army/Navy) and especially intra-military (Navy) relations and on the professional and political career of one leading naval figure, Admiral Kato Kanji (1873-1939). In this re-appraisal of Kato's career, the author challenges the conventional and negative interpretation of both Kato's role in the naval politics and factions within the Imperial Navy, utilizing Kato's involvement in the domestic political debate as a focal device for studying two key areas of Japanese civil-military relations: civilian control and the phenomenon of massive, overt naval intervention in domestic politics.

The Indian Navy has gradually emerged as an indispensable tool of Indian diplomacy in recent years, making it imperative for Indian policy-makers and naval thinkers to think anew the role of the nation's naval forces in Indian strategy. There is a long tradition in India of viewing the maritime dimension of security as central to the nation's strategic priorities. With India's economic rise, India is trying to bring that focus back, making its navy integral to national grand strategy. This volume is the first full-length examination of the myriad issues that have emerged out of the recent rise of Indian naval power.

This book is a comparative study of the evolution of the German navy in the second half of the nineteenth century. It examines the development of strategy, especially commerce-raiding, in comparison to what other navies were doing in this era of rapid technological change. It is not an insular history, merely listing ship rosters or specific events; it is a history of the German navy in relation to its potential foes. It is also a look at a new military institution involved in an inter-service rivalry for funds, technology and manpower with the prestigious and well-established army.

Maritime issues are particularly important for Asian countries, where there is a high reliance on shipping routes for international trade, many difficult disputes over maritime boundaries, and the prospect of increasing tensions where maritime power might play a significant role. This book uses contributions by 17 experts to build a comprehensive survey of the maritime issues affecting Asia. It discusses the issues overall, goes on to examine the issues from the perspective of each of 14 key countries, and concludes by assessing the prospects for resolving common problems in order to preserve good order at sea.

The story of the African-American crew of the USS Mason that made history in World War II when they escorted six convoys across the Atlantic.

This book was originally published in 1957. During the First World War, German use of unrestricted submarine warfare, supported by extensive mining and surface raids, very nearly forced Britain out of the war in 1917. The island's heavy dependence on seaborne supplies was gravely threatened again in 1939, supplemented this time by air attacks on shipping. After the war, Commanders Waters and Barley wrote a Naval Staff History which has long been recognised as an authoritative study of the impact of the German campaign and its ultimate defeat by Britain and her allies. It remains an indispensable basis for any serious study of the Battle of the Atlantic and has here been updated and revised by Dr Grove, who also contributes a perceptive introduction outlining its significance.