Told here for the first time in vivid detail is the story of the defenders of Wake Island following their surrender to the Japanese on December 23, 1941. The highly regarded military historian Gregory Urwin spent decades researching what happened and now offers a revealing look at the U.S. Marines, sailors, soldiers, and civilian contractors in captivity. In addition to exhaustive archival research, he interviewed dozens of POWs and even some of ...
When submarines failed to return to port from patrol, they were officially listed by the Navy as overdue and presumed lost. Loved ones were notified by the War Department that their siblings, spouses, and sons were missing in action and presumed lost. While 52 U.S. submarines were sunk during World War II, the Japanese took prisoners of war from the survivors of only seven of these lost submarines. Presumed Lost is the compelling story of the fi ...
Like its World War II namesake of Leyte Gulf fame, USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG 58) was a small combatant built for escort duty. But its skipper imbued his brand-new crew with a fighting spirit to match their forebears, and in 1988 when the guided missile frigate was thrust into the Persian Gulf at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, there was no better ship for the job. Forbidden to fire unless fired upon, Captain Paul Rinn and his crew sailed amid ...
A member of Light Attack Squadron 212 s «Rampant Raiders,» A-4 pilot Stephen R. Gray writes about his experiences flying combat sorties from the deck of an aircraft carrier during one of the most intense periods of aerial combat in U.S. history. From the perspective of a junior naval aviator, Gray reveals the lessons he learned first at the Naval Aviation Training Command and then in actual combat flying the Skyhawk from USS Bon Homme Richard in ...
While scores of books have been published about the atomic bombings that helped end World War II, little has been written about the personal lives and relationship of the three men that led the raid. Paul Tibbets, Tom Ferebee, and Ted “Dutch” Van Kirk exemplified what Life Magazine meant when in 1942 it called the B-17 pilot, bombardier, and navigator “the three musketeers of the Army Air Forces.” A former n ...
Before America entered World War II, twenty-two U.S. citizens went to England and volunteered with the Royal Navy. Commissioned between September 1939 and November 1941, they fought in the Battle of the Atlantic and on a variety of fronts. While the history of Americans serving in the Royal Air Force is well known, the story of these naval volunteers has not been previously told. Most trained at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, but since fo ...
From 1928 to 1943, Erich Raeder led the German navy during the last turbulent years of the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, and through World War II, yet until now there has not been a full-length biography written about him. This study draws on archival resources and the rich scholarship of German naval history over the past five decades to review the evolution of Raeder's concept of naval strategy and his attempts to achieve the polit ...
This book is a history of public information and personal ideas about war and the military over the last century. It examines the interplay between popular media coverage of the nation's wars and the perceptions of ordinary Americans regarding military issues. Davidson studied Americans who produced a wealth of proposals to solve some of the most pressing military problems of their day. His book consists of hundreds of letters sent to those ...
Twenty-five years in the Navy had made Cheryl Ruff an independent, resilient, strong woman – and a master at providing patient care while serving at various Navy hospitals around the world. But nothing prepared her mind, body, soul, and spirit for what she experienced on the frontlines of the Iraq war as a member of the Bravo Surgical Company. Known as the «devil docs,» they followed directly behind the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force as they ent ...
