The Battle of Tassafaronga, November 30, 1942, was the fifth and last major night surface action fought off Savo Island during World War II s Guadalcanal campaign. It ended a string of Japanese victories, but it was also a horrible embarrassment to the U.S. Navy, which had three heavy cruisers damaged and one sunk to enemy torpedoes. After the battle, American commanders erroneously reported that multiple enemy ships had been sunk or seriously d ...
Nimitz called this book about the USS Aaron Ward on the radar picket line in the Pacific, «the finest story of the war that I have been privileged to read.» ...
On May 7 and 8, 1942, fast carrier task forces from the United States and Imperial Japanese navies met in combat for the first time in the Battle of the Coral Sea. A strategic victory for the U.S. in spite of the loss of the carrier Lexington, the destroyer Sims and the fleet oiler Neosho, the battle blunted the Japanese drive on Port Moresby, a valuable Allied air and naval base controlling the western Coral Sea and northern Australia.John B. L ...
In early December 1941 in the Philippines, a young Navy ensign named Kemp Tolley was given his first ship command, an old 76-foot schooner that had once served as a movie prop in John Ford's «The Hurricane.» Crewed mostly by Filipinos who did not speak English and armed with a cannon that had last seen service in the Spanish-American War, the Lanikai was under top-secret presidential orders to sail south into waters where the Japanese fleet ...
With all the immediacy of an eyewitness account, Anthony Pitch tells the dramatic story of the British invasion of Washington in the summer of 1814, an episode many call a defining moment in the coming-of-age of the United States. The British torched the Capitol, the White House, and many other public buildings, setting off an inferno that illuminated the countryside for miles and sending President James Madison scurrying out of town while his w ...
Calling the Combined Chiefs of Staff the glue that held the British-American alliance together in World War II, David Rigby describes the vital contributions to Allied victory made by the organization, which drew its members from the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the British Chiefs of Staff Committee, and the British Joint Staff Mission. Readers get a good understanding of the personalities involved and insights into the relationships between the ...
This is the first book to examine Thomas Holcomb s crucial role as commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps during the Great Depression and World War II. It blends biographical, institutional, and operational history with leadership studies, organizational theory, and social and cultural history to explain how and why Holcomb succeeded in expanding the Marine Corps from 18,000 officers and men in 1936 to 385,000 by 1943. David Ulbrich contends that H ...
Although bad eyesight kept him from receiving a commission in the U.S. Navy when he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1933, Draper Kauffman became a hero of underwater demolition in World War II and went on to a distinguished naval career. Today Admiral Kauffman is remembered as the nation's first frogman and the father of the Navy Seals. His spectacular wartime service disarming enemy bombs, establishing bomb disposal schools, and organi ...
