Download or read book United States PT boats of World War II in Action written by Frank D. Johnson and published by Blandford. This book was released on 1980 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the development of American motor-torpedo boats and their important role in naval operations during World War II.
Download or read book US Patrol Torpedo Boats written by Gordon L. Rottman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-12-20 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK. Motor torpedo boat development began in the early 1900s, and the vessels first saw service during World War I. However, it was not until the late 1930s that the US Navy commenced the development of the Patrol Torpedo or PT boat. The PT boat was designed for attacking larger warships with torpedoes using its 'stealth' ability, high-speed and small size to launch and survive these attacks – although they were employed in a wide variety of other missions, including rescuing General MacArthur and his entourage from the Philippines. This book examines the design and development of these unique craft, very few of which survive today, and goes on to examine their role and combat deployment in World War II.
Download or read book At Close Quarters PT Boats in the United States Navy written by Robert J. Bulkley and published by Historical Studies. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small though they were, PT boats played a key role in World War II, carrying out an astonishing variety of missions where fast, versatile, and strongly armed vessels were needed. Called "weapons of opportunity," they met the enemy at closer quarters and with greater frequency than any other type of surface craft. Among the most famous PT commanders was John F. Kennedy, whose courageous actions in the Pacific are now well known to the American public. The author of the book, another distinguished PT boat commander in the Pacific, compiled this history of PT-boat operations in World War II for the U.S. Navy shortly after V-J Day, when memories were fresh and records easily assessable. Bulkley provides a wealth of facts about these motor torpedo boats, whose vast range of operation covered two oceans as well as the Mediterranean and the English Channel. Although their primary mission was to attack surface ships and craft close to shore, they were also used effectively to lay mines and smoke screens, to rescue downed aviators, and to carry out intelligence and raider operations. The author gives special attention to the crews, paying well-deserved tribute to their heroism, skill, and sacrifice that helped to win the war.
Download or read book The Mosquito Fleet written by Bern Keating and published by Alpha Edition. This book was released on 2023-11-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mosquito Fleet, a classical and rare book that has been considered essential throughout human history, so that this work is never forgotten, we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.
Download or read book Under a Blood Red Sun written by John J. Domagalski and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Into the Dark Water “balances scholarly research with accessible storytelling” to tell the heroic WWII account of Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 (Midwest Book Review). During the opening days of World War II in the Pacific, a small group of American sailors in the Philippines were propelled into the forefront of the fighting against the navy and air power of Imperial Japan. They were manned with six small, wooden PT-boats and led by a courageous, larger-than-life character in Lt. John D. Bulkeley. As America’s defense of the Philippines crumbled under the weight of a massive Japanese assault, the courageous activities of Bulkeley’s Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 made headlines across the United States—often as the only good news coming from the bleak Pacific front. The unit achieved everlasting fame by evacuating Gen. Douglas MacArthur from the front. Then, the squadron continued to fight on until all six of its torpedo boats were lost under fire. The fate of the doomed American defenders was sealed when the Japanese won the battle for the islands in the spring of 1942. The exploits of the unit were immortalized in the blockbuster 1945 movie They Were Expendable, starring John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, but since then, the saga of Bulkeley and his men has slipped into history. Under a Blood Red Sun revives the story of the Philippine PT-boats through the intertwined accounts of Bulkeley and his subordinate officers and men. It is a story of the courage and sacrifice of men thousands of miles from their homeland, representing American gallantry and fighting prowess, giving the Japanese a taste of what was to come their way.
Download or read book Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats that Won World War II written by Jerry E. Strahan and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hellions of the Deep written by Robert Gannon and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ultimately, World War II was the first war won by technology, but within only a few weeks after the war began, the U.S. Navy realized its torpedo program was a dismal failure. Submarine skippers reported that most of their torpedoes were either missing the targets or failing to explode if they did hit. The United States had to work fast if it expected to compete with the Japanese Long Lance, the biggest and fastest torpedo in the world, and Germany's electric and sonar models. Hellions of the Deep tells the dramatic story of how Navy planners threw aside the careful procedures of peacetime science and initiated &"radical research&": gathering together the nation's best scientists and engineers in huge research centers and giving them freedom of experimentation to create sophisticated weaponry with a single goal&—winning the war. The largest center for torpedo work was a requisitioned gymnasium at Harvard University, where the most famous names in science worked with the best graduate students from all around the country at the business of war. They had to produce tangible weapons, to consider production and supply tactics, to take orders from the military, and, in many cases, also to teach the military how to use the weapons they developed. World War II grew into a chess match played by scientists and physicists, and it became the only war in history to be won by weapons invented during the conflict. For this book, Robert Gannon conducted numerous interviews over a twenty-year period with scientists, engineers, physicists, submarine skippers, and Navy bureaucrats, all involved in the development of the advanced weapons technology that won the war. While the search for new weapons was deadly serious, stretching imagination and resourcefulness to the limit each day, the need was obvious: American ships were being blown up daily just outside the Boston harbor. These oral histories reveal that, in retrospect, surprising even to those who went through it, the search for the &"hellions of the deep&" was, for many, the most exciting period of their lives.
Download or read book World War II Warships written by John Batchelor and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fleet of 28 accurately detailed ships includes the ill-fated PT-109, commanded by a young John F. Kennedy, a German U-boat, and the USS Missouri, the battleship on which the Japanese surrendered.
Download or read book Dog Boats at War written by Leonard C. Reynolds and published by Alan Sutton Publishing. This book was released on 1998 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armed to the teeth with heavy weapons, the Royal Navy's D class MGBs and MTBs played havoc with enemy convoys during World War II, engaging and sinking dozens of vessels. This account of the Dog Boats in action draws upon offical records and eye-witness testimony to examine their contribution to the defence of the Normandy landings assault areas, and their clandestine, special duty missions to pick up agents and RAF pilots passed back along the escape routes of the French Resistance.
Download or read book Schnellboot in Action Op written by David Krakow and published by MMD-Squadron Signal. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Larger, faster, and more powerful than Allied counterparts, the Schnellboot was perhaps the best motor torpedo boat of WWII. Unlike mass-produced Allied boats, Germany spared no expense in equipping the Schnellboot with the speed, protection, maneuverability, and firepower to strike and survive in increasingly hostile seas. Operating under the cover of darkness and using cutting-edge technology, the Schnellboot remained a menace until the last days of WWII, long after all other Kriegsmarine surface combatants had been neutralized. This book is an informative and richly-illustrated technical history of these sleek, powerful vessels, from the first to the final variants. It includes detailed information on weapons, electronics, optics, engines, camouflage, and more. This new edition has many new photos, in-depth captions, additional color profiles, and all-new, meticulously detailed scale drawings.
Download or read book The Fleet the Gods Forgot written by Walter G. Winslow and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic tale of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet in World War II received little attention prior to the publication of this book in 1982, when Winslow chronicled their short and tragic story of heroism and defeat.Greatly outnumbered by vastly superior forces, and saddled with defective equipment; a lack of supplies, reinforcements, and air cover; and, towards the end, an incompetent and bungled Allied combined command, the Asiatic fleet met the Japanese head-on. Within a matter of three months, however, the beleaguered ships were totally wiped out. Captain Walter Winslow, a naval aviator on board the USS Houston, flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, was in a unique position to tell the riveting story. As an active participant in all the major battles the fleet engaged in, he had an intimate understanding of the calamities that befell it. In addition, he drew upon the his own extensive notes he kept from a POW camp while interviewing other American, British, Dutch, and Australian prisoners from the Allied fleet. Winslow also painstakingly tracked down war documents and battle reports from all the ships assigned to the fleet to paint a complete picture filled with graphic details of the fleet’s only victory at Balikpapan; the disastrous Battle of the Java Sea that broke the back of the combined Asiatic fleet; the ghastly spectacle at Sunda Strait where the Houston struggled to survive; the suspenseful episode in the submarine Perch trapped in the mud at the bottom of the sea; and the daring escape from Corregidor of eighteen crewmembers from the USS Quail who refused to surrender to the Japanese forces.
Download or read book PT 109 written by William Doyle and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary World War II story of shipwreck and survival that paved John F. Kennedy's path to power – hailed as a “breathtaking account” by James Patterson, “masterfully written” by historian Douglas Brinkley, and “the finest book” ever written on the subject by Lt. Commander William Liebenow, the man who rescued JFK and the PT 109 crew in August 1943. In the early morning darkness of August 2, 1943, during a chaotic nighttime skirmish amid the Solomon Islands, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri barreled through thick fog and struck the U.S. Navy's motor torpedo boat PT 109, splitting the craft nearly in half and killing two American sailors instantly. The sea erupted in flames as the 109's skipper, John F. Kennedy, and the ten surviving crewmen under his command desperately clung to the sinking wreckage; 1,200 feet of ink-black, shark-infested water loomed beneath. "All hands lost," came the reports back to the Americans' base: no rescue was coming for the men of PT 109. Their desperate ordeal was just beginning—so too was one of the most remarkable tales of World War II, one whose astonishing afterlife would culminate two decades later in the White House. Drawing on original interviews with the last living links to the events, previously untapped Japanese wartime archives, and a wealth of archival documents from the Kennedy Library, including a lost first-hand account by JFK himself, bestselling author William Doyle has crafted a thrilling and definitive account of the sinking of PT 109 and its shipwrecked crew's heroics. Equally fascinating is the story's second act, in which Doyle explores in new detail how this extraordinary episode shaped Kennedy's character and fate, proving instrumental to achieving his presidential ambitions: "Without PT 109, there never would have been a President John F. Kennedy," declared JFK aide David Powers. Featuring castaways on a deserted island, a spy network of Solomon Island natives, an Australian coast watcher hidden on the side of a volcano, an S.O.S. note carved into a coconut, and a daring rescue attempt led by Kennedy's fellow American PT boats, PT 109 is an unforgettable American epic of war and destiny.
Download or read book Unsinkable written by James Sullivan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the true story of a U.S. Navy destroyer that inspired the writings of John Ford and Herman Wouk, drawing on the journals and other writings of five shipmates who witnessed the Anzio attacks and D-Day invasion.
Download or read book PT 109 John F Kennedy in World War II written by Robert J. Donovan and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American PT Boats in World War II written by Victor Chun and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American PT Boats in World War II written by Victor Chun and published by Schiffer Pub Limited. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American PT Boats in World War II is an illustrated study of the development, construction, tactics, and combat actions, of U.S. PT Boats.
Download or read book Torpedo Run written by Robb White and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
