In 1940 a first-year student at Oxford gave up his legal studies to serve his country in its time of need. He served with valour and distinction, receiving the Distinguished Service Cross for developing and then delivering battlewinning tactics that protected the flanks of the D-Day landings. But Guy Hudson also saw things that cannot be unseen, and experienced the horrors of war that become tattooed on one's soul. This is the story of a brave and patriotic sailor who helped sink the German battleship Bismarck, drove his Motor Torpedo Boat into enemy harbours right under the muzzles of Axis guns, and then pioneered radar control procedures for the small torpedo and gun boats that careered across pitch-dark maritime battlefields to guard the Allied landings in northern France. It is also the story of a man who turned to alcohol to control the darker memories created by war, and whose life and business collapsed due to the demon of drink, before he was rescued by his second wife. His legacy now lives on at the University of Oxford through the Guy Hudson Memorial Trust - this biography is his tribute.

During the French wars (1793-1801, 1803-1815) the system of promotion to flag rank in the Royal Navy produced a cadre of admirals numbering more than two hundred at its peak. These officers competed vigorously for a limited number of appointments at sea and for the high honours and significant financial rewards open to successful naval commanders. When on active service admirals faced formidable challenges arising from the Navy's critical role in a global conflict, from the extraordinary scope of their responsibilities, and from intense political, public and professional expectations. While a great deal has been written about admirals' roles in naval operations, other aspects of their professional lives have not been explored systematically. British Flag Officers in the French Wars, 1793-1815 considers the professional lives of well-known and more obscure admirals, vice-admirals and rear-admirals. It examines the demands of naval command, flag officers' understanding of their authority and their approach to exercising it, their ambitions and failures, their professional interactions, and their lives afloat and onshore. In exploring these themes, it draws on a wide range of correspondence and other primary source material. By taking a broad thematic approach, this book provides a multi-faceted account of admirals' professional lives that extends beyond the insights that are found in biographical studies of individual flag officers. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of British naval history.

This book is the first comprehensive history of an important, but mostly overlooked, element of the World War II Patrol Torpedo (PT) boats: the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center (MTBSTC) in Melville, Rhode Island. While not every sailor who served on PT boats went through the training at MTBSTC, every PT sailor was affected by what went on there. The MTBSTC created the PT boats' operational policies and tactics, as well as weapons and equipment experimentation and development. Even the orders the men received for their PT boat assignment were dictated by the MTBSTC. Most of the books written about PT boats have only a passing reference to the MTBSTC. This lack of detailed information on the Training Center has left a large hole in the overall printed history of PT boats. This book fills that gap.

This book documents the Training Center from its beginnings when the land was undeveloped swampland, through its growing pains during construction and expansion during the war. It traces the problems of developing a training curriculum from scratch, the struggles to keep the training current, up through the point when the training reached its peak of proficiency just as the war ended. It provides insight into what life was like for the sailors that spent two to three months going through the training program and of those who were stationed at the Training Center as instructors or staff personnel. This book also details the Training Center's post-war career and its current development as a thriving marina and boat building enterprise.

This book is culled from the MTBSTC's wartime correspondence files and other deck logs, published and unpublished books, articles, and reports; and interviews with PT boat veterans who underwent the training at the MTBSTC. It is lavishly illustrated with archival, private, and public photographs, most of which have never been published before.

This book completes the written history of the PT boats in World War II.

Full color and black and white images throughout. Historical study covers the service in the Asia-Pacific region of the U.S. Seventh Fleet during the 20th and 21st centuries. The Fleet saw combat in nearly every major battle of World War II in the Pacific as well as in the Cold War conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Today the Fleet acts as a deterrence to aggressor nations in the region, provides humanitarian relief in times of disaster, participates in joint and combined exercises, and conducts counter-terrorism and anti-pirate operations.

As WW2progressed and convoys of merchant ships were lost to the enemy the Royal Navy provided armed escorts. The very last escort vessel then became known as `THE CANTEEN BOAT'. The vessel would be commanded by the lowest ranking of the Royal Navy escort Vessels. H.M.S. CASSANDRA a brand new Destroyer was in her last stages of "Working up ". The story here is remarkable how an inexperienced war ship and ships company battled the odds with little help and survived without suffering more casualties. The conditions were terrible, but the morale was good. I have not been able to find any record of a situation recorded similar to that contained in this book. If the above had not been successfully accomplished the only alternative most likely would have been the following. Remove everybody that it was possible to remove, before the convoy steamed too far ahead. The ship would have then been sunk by our own forces to prevent it falling into the hands of the enemy.

The 1897 Prize Essay for the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute was this lengthy discussion of "Torpedo Boat Policy" by Lieutenant R.C. Smith. He began by correctly observing: "It seems probable that the United States, after many years hesitation, is about to enter on a policy of torpedo boat construction." This facsimile edition includes a tabular appendix listing all the torpedo boats in service in the world's navies as of 1897. An essential primary source for anyone interested in torpedo boats and their history.

Part of the Torpedo Boat Classics series.

China's expanding air and naval capabilities, coupled with the proliferation of long-range anti-ship and anti-air missile systems, are making US naval diplomacy an increasingly risky enterprise. It is surprising therefore how little attention has been devoted to comparing the way in which different administrations have reacted in dissimilar manners to major naval incidents. This book provides the first comparative analysis of multiple cases. In particular, it examines three incidents: the Maine incident (1898), which led to war in the short term; the Lusitania crisis (1915), which set the trajectory for intervention; and the Panay incident (1937), which was settled diplomatically. After scrutinizing these incidents and the domestic and international factors shaping the subsequent crisis, Douglas Carl Peifer analyses the presidential decision making in terms of options considered and policies selected. The book draws upon international relations and coercion theory but emphasizes the importance of context, complexity, and contingency when assessing presidential decision making. The contemporary tensions in East Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Baltic, and the Black Sea are increasingly vexing US naval diplomacy. By analyzing how Presidents William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to the Maine, Lusitania, and Panay incidents, this book provides an essential instrument to deal with the growing threats of a new naval crisis.

Naval War College Historical Monograph Series, 18. Examines in detail, making extensive use of the Naval War College archives, each of the U.S. Navy's twenty-one "fleet problems" conducted between World Wars I and II, elucidating the patterns that emerged, finding a range of enduring lessons, and suggesting their applicability for future naval warfare.

This epic story opens at the hour the Greatest Generation went to war on December 7, 1941, and follows four U.S. Navy ships and their crews in the Pacific until their day of reckoning three years later with a far different enemy: a deadly typhoon. In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms, placing the mighty U.S. Third Fleet in harm's way. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, as well as many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson finds some of the story's truest heroes exhibiting selflessness, courage, and even defiance.

From the mid-19th century to the early Cold War, the United States has a long history with China, and that interaction has not always been positive or productive. This brief history of foreign intervention in China, viewed through the experiences of the United States Marines, examines how the occupying powers dealt with a fellow sovereign nation. In many cases this involved the partition or outright absorption of Chinese territory through naked aggression. Clark contends that, considering the past two centuries, the Chinese have good reason to distrust all foreigners, and he urges the pursuit of a badly needed rapprochement.

This is, however, also the story of the evolution of the Marine Corps as a separate service. Although an occupying force, the Marines did make considerable efforts to earn the friendship of the Chinese people. Always on the brink of extinction due to budgetary cuts and the enmity of the army and navy, the Marines managed to perform an onerous and difficult duty in a foreign land. With a resurgent China constantly testing the United States, a fellow Pacific Rim nation, every policymaker should be well aware of the often difficult history that we share and the mistakes that have been made in the past.