Naval Forces

On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants....

The planning, the strategy, the sacrifices and heroics - on both sides - illuminating the greatest naval war in history....

On June 4, 1944, the course of World War II was forever changed. That day, a US Navy task force achieved the impossible—capturing a German U-Boat. Called Operation Nemo, it was the first seizure of an enemy ship in battle since the War of 1812, one of the greatest achievements of the US Navy....

Pacific War expert Mark Stille examines the battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval encounter in history and probably the most decisive naval battle of the entire Pacific War....

From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series—with more than twelve million copies sold—comes a fast-paced, dramatic account of the famous yet little understood battle that turned the tide of World War II.

Hawaii, 1941. War clouds with Japan are gathering and the islands of Hawaii have become battlegrounds of spies, intelligence agents, and military officials - with the island's residents caught between them....

Midnight in the Pacific is both a sweeping narrative and a compelling drama of individual marines, soldiers, and sailors caught in the crosshairs of history....

In 1991, acting on a tip from a local fisherman, two scuba divers discovered a sunken German U-boat, complete with its crew of 60 men, not too far off the New Jersey coast....

The best-selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters tells the story of a wild encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812....

Interweaving the stories of three survivors - the captain, the ship's doctor, and a young marine - journalist Doug Stanton has brought this astonishing human drama to life....

In the early morning hours of October 24, 1944, the legendary U.S. Navy submarine Tang was hit by one of its own faulty torpedoes. The survivors of the explosion struggled to stay alive one hundred-eighty feet beneath the surface, while the Japanese dropped deadly depth charges.

World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light....

With The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Ship of Ghosts, James D. Hornfischer created essential and enduring narratives about America’s World War II Navy....

Regarded as the standard biography of World War II naval hero Adm. Raymond A. Spruance....

Thousands of miles from friendly ports, the US Navy had finally managed to complete the capture of Guadalcanal from the Japanese in early 1943. Now the Allies sought to keep the offensive momentum won at such a high cost...

The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland....

From twenty-two-year naval and marine veteran Montel Williams comes a thrilling history of how one World War II aircraft carrier’s crew defied all odds, redefining the very meaning of what it means to struggle, persevere and survive.

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway....

A stirring narrative of World War II's final major battle—the Pacific war's largest, bloodiest, most savagely fought campaign—the last of its kind....

Fat Leonard is the unvarnished story of how a charismatic Malaysian defense contractor bribed scores of high-ranking military officers, defrauded the US Navy of tens of millions of dollars, and jeopardized our nation’s security.

This is the little-known story of how a newly independent nation was challenged by four Muslim powers and what happened when America's third president decided to stand up....

The extraordinary story of the World War II air, land, and sea campaign that brought the U.S. Navy to the apex of its strength and marked the rise of the United States as a global superpower....

On 27 October 1942, four "Long Lance" torpedoes fired by the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo exploded in the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet....

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the Philippine Sea when she is sunk by two Japanese torpedoes. For the next five nights, almost 300 miles from the nearest land, nearly 900 men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other....

The Admirals tells the story of how history's only five-star admirals triumphed in World War II and made the United States the world's dominant sea power....

From Martin Dugard, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Bill O'Reilly's Killing series—with more than twelve million copies sold—comes a fast-paced, dramatic account of the famous yet little understood battle that turned the tide of World War II.

1944. The USS Intrepid set sail on its first combat voyage, only to be struck by a Japanese torpedo plane, jamming its rudder at a forty-five-degree angle. It could only sail in circles amid treacherous waters. The task force abandoned ship as it tried to make the 3,300-mile voyage to Pearl Harbor. For a day, the captain was able to slalom, alternating use of the ship’s engines, but the seas became too perilous. Until one resilient crewman came up with the ingenious idea of rigging a twenty-eight-inch-high sail on the second deck to steer the ship home safe.

In this swashbuckling adventure story, bestselling historian Alexander Rose draws on long-classified encrypted documents and intercepted German transmissions to unravel, for the first time, the astounding tale of a daring heist cooked up by an owlish egghead and a glory-seeking buccaneer to score the richest prize on the high seas.

USS Intrepid's Fighting Squadron 18 (VF-18) was one of the U.S. Navy's highest-scoring carrier units of World War II. Despite having only one combat veteran in its roster, its aviators were credited with shooting down more than 170 planes during their eighty-one-day tour of duty, earning the squadron the nickname "Two-a-Day 18" in newspapers nationwide. How did a novice unit with a comparatively short time in theater accomplish such a feat?

Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world‘s navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio).