Download or read book Liberty Ships written by David Doyle and published by Schiffer Military History. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although not a weapon in the traditional sense of the word, arguably no item in the Allied arsenal contributed as much to the defeat of the Axis during WWII as did the Liberty ships. The 2,710 Liberty ships placed into service between 1941 and 1945 provided a vital link in the supply chain not only of US but also Allied forces during WWII. Although the basic design itself was obsolete even before the first one slid down the builder's ways, it had the advantage of being relatively easy to produce, and simple to operate and maintain. Thus, the vessels were mass-produced by no fewer than eighteen shipyards. Building time, initially 244 days, dropped to forty-two days per ship, although as a publicity stunt the Robert E. Peary was launched four days and fifteen and a half hours after the keel was laid.
Download or read book Ships for Victory written by Frederic Chapin Lane and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2001-09-21 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of America's intensive shipbuilding programme during World War II, this explores the development of revolutionary construction methods and the recruitment, training, housing and union activities of the workers.
Download or read book Heroes in Dungarees written by Estate of: John Bunker and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A World War II merchant seaman, John Bunker takes a thorough look at the American merchant marines' significant contributions to the war effort. There are plenty of fascinating facts about their extensive supply operations, but the focus of the book is on the men and their often-heroic actions. Bunker draws from his own experiences to describe the action at sea and also includes the personal stories of many other civilian participants. It is an engaging portrayal of the courage, bravery, and ingenuity demonstrated by these merchant seamen. All theaters of operation using U.S. merchant ships are covered; in addition, Bunker provides information on events before the country entered the war when efforts were being made to build more ships and to recruit the men necessary to crew the huge fleet.
Download or read book Sea Lanes in Wartime written by Robert Greenhalgh Albion and published by . This book was released on 1942 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Merchant Ship Shapes written by and published by . This book was released on 1944 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book At All Costs written by Sam Moses and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-11-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gripping, page-turning account, Sam Moses has told a story in the tradition of Sebastian Junger’s A Perfect Storm, Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers, and Hampton Sides’s Ghost Soldiers. It’s a story about the heroism of two men in battle at sea during World War II, and one woman fleeing Nazi Norway with her child. It’s about how courage can change the course of history. AT ALL COSTS: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Marines Turned the Tide of World War II is the astonishing untold account, with original historical reporting, of how two men faced unfathomable danger to help save the island of Malta, Churchill’s crux of the war. In 1942, the tiny island of Malta was the most heavily bombed place on earth. Hitler needed Malta as a stepping-stone to get to the oil in Iraq and Iran (Persia at the time). Blockaded by sea, Malta was running on empty, in food, fuel and ammunition. Axis U-boats and dive-bombers made supply convoys to Malta more like suicide missions. In this last-hope convoy, 50 warships escorted 13 freighters carrying aviation fuel, and a single critical tanker, the SS Ohio, with 107,000 barrels of oil from Texas. Winston Churchill had traveled to Washington and asked FDR for the tanker–his prime ministership was at stake over this mission to Malta. Relentlessly dive-bombed and repeatedly torpedoed, the Ohio suffered huge hits and was abandoned. Two young American merchant mariners– pulled from the sea after their own ship went down in flames–boarded the ravaged tanker, repaired her guns and fought off German and Italian dive-bombers, as the sinking Ohio was towed at 4 knots toward Malta with a tiny crew of volunteers. Sam Moses’ AT ALL COSTS is a triumphant story of human bravery: fearless, selfless acts by men determined to save a ship and win a war; profound communal courage from an island under brutal siege; and leaders who understood the cause of freedom.
Download or read book The Mathews Men written by William Geroux and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Vividly drawn and emotionally gripping." —Daniel James Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat From the author of The Ghost Ships of Archangel, one of the last unheralded heroic stories of World War II: the U-boat assault off the American coast against the men of the U.S. Merchant Marine who were supplying the European war, and one community’s monumental contribution to that effort Mathews County, Virginia, is a remote outpost on the Chesapeake Bay with little to offer except unspoiled scenery—but it sent an unusually large concentration of sea captains to fight in World War II. The Mathews Men tells that heroic story through the experiences of one extraordinary family whose seven sons (and their neighbors), U.S. merchant mariners all, suddenly found themselves squarely in the cross-hairs of the U-boats bearing down on the coastal United States in 1942. From the late 1930s to 1945, virtually all the fuel, food and munitions that sustained the Allies in Europe traveled not via the Navy but in merchant ships. After Pearl Harbor, those unprotected ships instantly became the U-boats’ prime targets. And they were easy targets—the Navy lacked the inclination or resources to defend them until the beginning of 1943. Hitler was determined that his U-boats should sink every American ship they could find, sometimes within sight of tourist beaches, and to kill as many mariners as possible, in order to frighten their shipmates into staying ashore. As the war progressed, men from Mathews sailed the North and South Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and even the icy Barents Sea in the Arctic Circle, where they braved the dreaded Murmansk Run. Through their experiences we have eyewitnesses to every danger zone, in every kind of ship. Some died horrific deaths. Others fought to survive torpedo explosions, flaming oil slicks, storms, shark attacks, mine blasts, and harrowing lifeboat odysseys—only to ship out again on the next boat as soon as they'd returned to safety. The Mathews Men shows us the war far beyond traditional battlefields—often the U.S. merchant mariners’ life-and-death struggles took place just off the U.S. coast—but also takes us to the landing beaches at D-Day and to the Pacific. “When final victory is ours,” General Dwight D. Eisenhower had predicted, “there is no organization that will share its credit more deservedly than the Merchant Marine.” Here, finally, is the heroic story of those merchant seamen, recast as the human story of the men from Mathews.
Download or read book Sea of Death written by Claes-Göran Wetterholm and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid the turmoil of the dying days of the Second World War, a series of ships were sunk in the Baltic. These terrible disasters add up to be the greatest loss of life ever recorded at sea, but the stories of these ships have been lost from view. While everyone recognises the name Titanic, the names Cap Arcona, Goya, General von Steuben and Thielbek draw little more than blank stares. Claes-Göran Wetterholm brings the horror of these tragic events to life in this gripping study, first published in Swedish, as he collates the unknown stories of four major shipping disasters, the most terrible in history. Combining archive research with interviews with survivors and the relatives of those who died, Wetterholm vividly conveys his experiences of meeting many witnesses to a forgotten and horrifying piece of history.
Download or read book Japanese Naval and Merchant Shipping Losses During World War II by All Causes written by United States. Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Liberty Ships of World War II written by Greg H. Williams and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book details the Liberty ships and the Emergency Shipbuilding Program during World War II. For the first time, comprehensive information is provided about the builders, the namesakes, and the operators under one cover. Included is a list of all 2,710 Liberty ships delivered by U.S. shipyards, giving each ship's namesake and detailed descriptions of the companies that built the ships and the steamship companies that operated them during the war. This book also details the formation of two shipyards in South Portland, Maine, the Todd-Bath Iron Shipbuilding Co. and the South Portland Shipbuilding Corp. South Portland's shady operations were investigated by the U.S. Congress and resulted in the merger of both companies into the New England Shipbuilding Corporation in April 1943. Also featured is the Jeremiah O'Brien. Built by New England Ship in 1943 and one of only two operational Liberty ships left in the world, its service history and crew information are given along with its postwar restoration and return to Normandy in 1994.
Download or read book Merchant Vessels of the United States written by and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 1788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ghost Ships of Archangel written by William Geroux and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary story of survival and alliance during World War II: the icy journey of four Allied ships crossing the Arctic to deliver much needed supplies to the Soviet war effort. On the fourth of July, 1942, four Allied ships traversing the Arctic separated from their decimated convoy to head further north into the ice field of the North Pole, seeking safety from Nazi bombers and U-boats in the perilous white maze of ice floes, growlers, and giant bergs. Despite the risks, they had a better chance of survival than the rest of Convoy PQ-17, a fleet of thirty-five cargo ships carrying $1 billion worth of war supplies to the Soviet port of Archangel--the limited help Roosevelt and Churchill extended to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to maintain their fragile alliance, even as they avoided joining the fight in Europe while the Eastern Front raged. The high-level politics that put Convoy PQ-17 in the path of the Nazis were far from the minds of the diverse crews aboard their ships. U.S. Navy Ensign Howard Carraway, aboard the SS Troubadour, was a farm boy from South Carolina and one of the many Americans for whom the convoy was to be a first taste of war; aboard the SS Ironclad, Ensign William Carter of the U.S. Navy Reserve had passed up a chance at Harvard Business School to join the Navy Armed Guard; from the Royal Navy Reserve, Lt. Leo Gradwell was given command of the HMT Ayrshire, a fishing trawler that had been converted into an antisubmarine vessel. All the while, The Ghost Ships of Archangel turns its focus on Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, playing diplomatic games that put their ships in peril. The twenty-four-hour Arctic daylight in midsummer gave no respite from bombers, and the Germans wielded the terrifying battleship Tirpitz, nicknamed The Big Bad Wolf. Icebergs were as dangerous as Nazis. As a newly forged alliance was close to dissolving and the remnants of Convoy PQ-17 tried to slip through the Arctic in one piece, the fate of the world hung in the balance.
Download or read book Victory Ships and Tankers written by Leonard Arthur Sawyer and published by Cornell Maritime Press/Tidewater Publishers. This book was released on 1974 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Liberty Ships written by Leonard Arthur Sawyer and published by Cornell Maritime Press/Tidewater Publishers. This book was released on 1970 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Seas That Mourn written by Patrick D. Smith and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2014-09-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1942 alone, German U-Boats sank almost four million gross registered tons of Allied ships convoying goods and war supplies to the war ravaged European continent, Britain and North Africa. That same year, 17-year-old Jimmy Kindall leaves his small Mississippi town to join the Merchant Marine. He soon discovers that supplying the troops in unprotected waters exposes him to some of the fiercest battles in WWII.
Download or read book Troopships of World War II written by Roland Wilbur Charles and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book contains authentic photographs and salient facts covering 358 troopships used in World War II. In addition, other vessels of miscellaneous character, including Victory and Liberty type temporary conversions for returning troops, are listed in the appendices ..."--Pref.
Download or read book World War II U S Navy Vessels in Private Hands written by Greg H. Williams and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, the U.S. Navy swiftly expanded to include an array of vessels, from smaller yachts and fishing boats bought early in the war for patrol work to fast, modern commercial ships built to haul troops and supplies. After the Allied victory, this diverse fleet became unnecessary and the Navy sold many of its vessels. This comprehensive catalog documents the Navy ships and boats sold after the war and registered under the American flag for commercial or recreational purposes. Focusing on those vessels with names or clearly identifiable hull numbers and crew accommodations, it chronicles each craft's prewar ownership, wartime history, and postwar fate. The product of painstaking detective work in a wide range of primary sources, this meticulous directory highlights an unexplored but illuminating aspect of U.S. maritime history.
