12 Seconds of Silence
How a Team of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon
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Narrated by:
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Chris Mayers
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By:
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Jamie Holmes
About this listen
The riveting story of the American scientists, tinkerers, and nerds who solved one of the biggest puzzles of World War II—and developed one of the most powerful weapons of the war.
12 Seconds of Silence is the remarkable, lost story of how a ragtag group of American scientists overcame one of the toughest problems of World War II: shooting things out of the sky.
Working in a secretive organization known as Section T, a team of physicists, engineers, and everyday Joes and Janes took on a devilish challenge. To help the Allies knock airplanes out of the air, they created one of the world’s first “smart weapons”. Against overwhelming odds and in a race against time, mustering every scrap of resource, ingenuity, and insight, the scientists of Section T would eventually save countless lives, rescue the city of London from the onslaught of a Nazi superweapon, and help bring about the Axis defeat. A holy grail sought after by Allied and Axis powers alike, their unlikely innovation ranks with the atomic bomb as one of the most revolutionary technologies of the Second World War. Until now, their tale was largely untold.
For fans of Erik Larson and Ben Macintyre, set amid the fog of espionage, dueling spies, and the dawn of an age when science would determine the fate of the world, 12 Seconds of Silence is a tribute to the extraordinary wartime mobilization of American science and the ultimate can-do story.
©2020 Jamie Holmes (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin HarcourtListeners also enjoyed...
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Great listen I
- By Amazon Customer on 06-21-21
By: Joe Pappalardo
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Scholars of Mayhem
- My Father's Secret War in Nazi-Occupied France
- By: Daniel C. Guiet, Timothy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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When Daniel Guiet was a child and his family moved country, as they frequently did, his father had one possession, a tin bread box, that always made the trip. Daniel was admonished never to touch the box, but one day he couldn't resist. What he found astonished him: a .45 automatic and five full clips; three slim knives; a length of wire with a wooden handle at each end; thin pieces of paper with random numbers on them; several passports with his father's photograph, each bearing a different name.
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Better than fiction!
- By M. Galloway on 04-04-21
By: Daniel C. Guiet, and others
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War's End
- An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission
- By: Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney, James A. Antonucci - contributor, Marion K. Antonucci - contributor
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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On August 9, 1945, on the tiny island of Tinian in the South Pacific, a 25-year-old American Army Air Corps major named Charles W. Sweeney climbed aboard a B-29 Superfortress in command of his first combat mission, one devised specifically to bring a long and terrible war to a necessary conclusion.... The last military officer to command an atomic mission, Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney has the unique distinction of having been an integral part of both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombing runs.
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the history of the details.
- By Don on 10-23-24
By: Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney, and others
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Operation Chastise
- The RAF's Most Brilliant Attack of World War II
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Max Hastings, Peter Noble
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The attack on Nazi Germany’s dams on May 17, 1943, was one of the most remarkable feats in military history. The absurdly young men of the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron set forth in cold blood and darkness, without benefit of electronic aids, to fly lumbering heavy bombers straight and level towards a target at a height above the water less than the length of a bowling alley. Yet this story has never been told in full. Max Hastings takes us back to the May 1943 raid to reveal how the truth of that night is considerably different from the popularized account most people know.
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Wish He Had Stuck to the Core Story
- By John on 06-22-20
By: Max Hastings
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Night Fighter
- An Insider's Story of Special Ops from Korea to SEAL Team 6
- By: William H. Hamilton Jr., Charles W. Sasser
- Narrated by: Bill Thatcher
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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One month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when President John F. Kennedy pressed Congress about America’s “urgent national needs”, he named expanding US special operations forces along with putting a man on the moon. Captain William Hamilton was the officer tasked with creating the finest unconventional warriors ever seen. Merging his own experience commanding Navy Underwater Demolition Teams with expertise from Army Special Forces and the CIA, and working with his subordinate, Roy Boehm, he cast the mold for sea-, air-, and land-dispatched night fighters.
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OK story
- By dexter on 03-16-20
By: William H. Hamilton Jr., and others
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Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942
- By: Ian W. Toll
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss. Pacific Crucible tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history and seized the strategic initiative.
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Astonishingly good.
- By Mike From Mesa on 09-01-12
By: Ian W. Toll
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Luck of the Draw
- My Story of the Air War in Europe
- By: Frank Murphy, Chloe Melas, Elizabeth Murphy
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Murphy, Jonas Moore, Chloe Melas
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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Beginning on August 17, 1942, American heavy bomber crews of the Eighth Air Force took off for combat in the hostile skies over occupied Europe. The final price was staggering. 4,300 B-17s and B-24s failed to return; nearly 21,000 men were taken prisoner or interned in a neutral country, and a further 17,650 made the ultimate sacrifice. Luck of the Draw is more than a war story. It’s the incredible, inspiring story of Frank Murphy, one of the few survivors from the 100th Bombardment Group, who cheated death for months in a German POW camp.
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Personal Accounting that the Narrator Destroyed
- By David Sajben on 03-09-23
By: Frank Murphy, and others
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Command and Control
- Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
- By: Eric Schlosser
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 20 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America's nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved - and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind.
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A miracle that we escaped the Cold War alive....
- By A reader on 02-16-14
By: Eric Schlosser
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Dead Reckoning
- The Story of How Johnny Mitchell and His Fighter Pilots Took on Admiral Yamamoto and Avenged Pearl Harbor
- By: Dick Lehr
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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“AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT DRILL.” At 7:58 a.m. on December 7, 1941, an officer at the Ford Island Command Center frantically typed what would become one of the most famous radio dispatches in history as the Japanese navy launched a surprise aerial assault on the American navy stationed in Hawaii. In a little over two hours, the Japanese killed more than 2,400 Americans and propelled the US’s entry into World War II. Dead Reckoning is the story of the mission to avenge that devastating strike.
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Half Soap Opera, target audience 20 something male
- By Donald L. Hogan on 03-20-21
By: Dick Lehr
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A Fiery Peace in a Cold War
- Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
- By: Neil Sheehan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history - and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust.
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Schriever rhymes with beaver.
- By John Gardner on 11-13-09
By: Neil Sheehan
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Area 51
- An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere s75 miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the US government - but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades. Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to 19 men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to 55 additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, 32 of whom lived and worked there for extended periods.
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Disappointing
- By Mike From Mesa on 06-06-11
By: Annie Jacobsen
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The 300
- The Inside Story of the Missile Defenders Guarding America Against Nuclear Attack
- By: Daniel Wasserbly
- Narrated by: Neal Bledsoe
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Comprised of just 300 soldiers, the United States Army’s 100th Missile Defense Brigade and 49th Missile Defense Battalion utilize sophisticated and cutting-edge technology to monitor the skies and seas surrounding the country and shield 300 million Americans against any potential nuclear threat. Named for the number of Spartan warriors who defended Greece at the Battle of Thermopylae, these vigilant individuals endure rigorous, always-evolving regimens to maintain peak efficiency in the event of an actual nuclear strike.
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This audiobook needs an editor
- By Jason Draper on 10-13-22
By: Daniel Wasserbly
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Churchill's Shadow Raiders
- The Race to Develop Radar, World War II's Invisible Secret Weapon
- By: Damien Lewis
- Narrated by: Nigel Carrington
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1941, as Britain faced defeat on all fronts, an RAF reconnaissance pilot photographed an alien-looking object on the French coast near Le Havre. The mysterious device - a “Wurzburg Dish” - appeared to be a new form of radar technology: ultra-compact, highly precise, and pointed directly across the English Channel.
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Great Listen
- By 3D RWC on 05-13-20
By: Damien Lewis
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Sand and Steel
- The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France
- By: Peter Caddick-Adams
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 37 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Sand and Steel gives us D-Day, arguably the greatest and most consequential military operation of modern times, beginning with the years of painstaking and costly preparation, through to the pitched battles fought along France's northern coast, from Omaha Beach to the Falaise and the push east to Strasbourg.
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Details, details, details
- By Mike From Mesa on 11-11-21
What listeners say about 12 Seconds of Silence
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Phillip
- 11-06-20
Great story, not the best performance.
Story is fantastic, but the narrator is pretty hard to listen to. Worth struggling through.
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- Taylor
- 12-19-20
Excellent story and production
This is a well researched and great story and should be a staple of WW2 and technology development enthusiasts. Well done.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-27-24
Epic tale of r&d
Anyone in tech should listen, and will instantly identify and feel inspired. This is about the most essential type of innovation, acheived against the most insurmountable odds.
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- dralph
- 07-29-21
Insufferable, massive, irrelevant details
The story of the VT fuse is a key weapon in WWII. It was considered one of the top three most closely held secrets of the Allies during the war:, the A-bomb, broken German and Japanese communications codes, and the VT proximity fuse. The fuse helped defeat the Japanese air forces, including a high percentage of Kamikazis, downing of the V-1 buzz bombs, and use in killing German troops in the Battle of the Bulge.
The trouble with this book's version is the interminable, insufferably long spells of irrelevant details about the childhood, schooling and personal lives of some of the principals in the VT fuse development story.
Live is short. Go elsewhere to learn about the development of the VT fuse. Google is a good start, can be thorough and far shorter than this punishment.
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- Brooke
- 02-09-23
Narrator is painfully slow, Author puts odd, distracting details in character descriptions
The story of the proximity fuse itself is an excellent one. The narration of this book, however, has made listening an absolute chore. I’ve had to speed up playback.
Also, while the author clearly has done his research, some details are obnoxiously distracting. We don’t need to know that someone had a scar on his ankle, or that one individual was 28 pounds heavier than another.
Also the literary device —>“imaginary quote” he thought as he walked excitedly to his office —> is irritating. It’s been 80 years, use another method of providing color and context than these imaginary conversations.
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