Download or read book The Boat that Won the War written by Charles C. Roberts, Jr. and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-07-30 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is an excellent examination of one of the most important Allied naval weapons of the Second World War.”—HistoryOfWar.org The Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel—LCVP for short, or simply the “Higgins boat” to most of its users—was one of the keystones of victory in the Second World War. Like the army’s Jeep or the Air Forces C-47 transport, it served in almost every theatre of war, performing unglamorous but vital service in the Allied cause. Derived from a humble workboat, the Higgins boatbuilding company designed a brilliantly simple craft that performed its role so well that over 23,000 of them were constructed—indeed, a high proportion of all the troops landed on enemy beaches came ashore from LCVPs, an achievement that led General Eisenhower to describe it as “the boat that won the war.” As Eisenhower had more experience of major amphibious operations than any other commander, it is a judgment to be taken seriously. This book combines the first in-depth history of the development and employment of the type, with a detailed description of its construction, machinery, performance and handling, based on the author’s first-hand experience masterminding the restoration of a wartime example for his museum. Well-illustrated with plans and photographs, it will be of interest to modelmakers and enthusiasts, both military and naval. “An invaluable record for military historians and the designers, builders and operators of the successor boats. The photographs and drawings of every imaginable aspect of the LVCPs are beyond price. A magnificent contribution to both naval history and the future planning of amphibious operations.”—Ausmarine
Download or read book The Boat That Won the War written by Charles C. Roberts and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2017-09 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel--LCVP for short, or simply the "Higgins boat" to most of its users--was "the boat that won the war," according to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Like the Jeep or the C-47 transport, it served in almost every theatre of World War II, performing unglamorous but vital service in the Allied cause. This book combines the first in-depth history of the development and employment of the type, with a detailed description of its construction, machinery, performance, and handling, based on the author's first-hand experience guiding the restoration of a wartime example for his museum. Well illustrated with plans and photographs, it will be of interest to model makers and enthusiasts, both military and naval.
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 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 Liberty written by Peter Elphick and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Culminating with the efforts to preserve the last surviving examples of these great ships, this is a fascinating account of one of the greatest achievements in maritime history, and a fitting tribute to all those who made and sailed on the ships that won the war."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Stealth Boat written by Gannon McHale and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stealth Boat is a memoir of Gannon McHale's years in the U.S. Navy and of the men he served with in the Submarine Service between 1967 and 1970, and some of what they accomplished and experienced during that time. It is my also his remembrance of what it was like to grow up aboard a nuclear powered Fast Attack Submarine. McHale reported aboard USS Sturgeon (SSN 637) still a boy, and left a young man. This was the most important period in his personal development, and it profoundly affected the way he has lived the rest of his life. For many years any public discussion of the mission of Fast Attack submarines during the Cold War has been strictly guarded. The Freedom of Information Act now allows us to look back at a period in our nation’s history that is worth remembering, and the part played by the U.S Submarine Service in winning that war is undeniable. America in the late 1960’s was tortured by internal and external conflict. The war in Vietnam was unpopular and the Draft was still in operation.At the age of nineteen millions of young American men faced the probability of being drafted and sent to fight a war that many of them did not believe in. Some fled the country, others were drafted, and many more like the author chose to be proactive about their military service and enlisted. His book focuses on several men who did just that, and in the process became lifelong friends.
Download or read book Enterprise written by Barrett Tillman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning author of Whirlwind presents the story of World War II's most decorated warship as drawn from oral histories, the author's interviews with last surviving veterans and historical accounts of its most significant military achievements. 35,000 first printing.
Download or read book The Burning Shore written by Ed Offley and published by Civitas Books. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On June 15, 1942, as thousands of vacationers lounged in the sun at Virginia Beach, two massive fireballs erupted just offshore from a convoy of oil tankers steaming into Chesapeake Bay. While men, women, and children gaped from the shore, two damaged oil tankers fell out of line and began to sink. Then a small escort warship blew apart in a violent explosion. Navy warships and aircraft peppered the water with depth charges, but to no avail. Within the next twenty-four hours, a fourth ship lay at the bottom of the channel— all victims of twenty-nine-year-old Kapitänleutnant Horst Degen and his crew aboard the German U-boat U-701. In The Burning Shore, acclaimed military reporter Ed Offley presents a thrilling account of the bloody U-boat offensive along America’s east coast during the first half of 1942, using the story of Degen’s three war patrols as a lens through which to view this forgotten chapter of World War II. For six months, German U-boats prowled the waters off the eastern seaboard, sinking merchant ships with impunity, and threatening to sever the lifeline of supplies flowing from America to Great Britain. Degen’s successful infiltration of the Chesapeake Bay in mid-June drove home the U-boats’ success, and his spectacular attack terrified the American public as never before. But Degen’s cruise was interrupted less than a month later, when U.S. Army Air Forces Lieutenant Harry J. Kane and his aircrew spotted the silhouette of U-701 offshore. The ensuing clash signaled a critical turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic—and set the stage for an unlikely friendship between two of the episode’s survivors. A gripping tale of heroism and sacrifice, The Burning Shore leads readers into a little-known theater of World War II, where Hitler’s U-boats came close to winning the Battle of the Atlantic before American sailors and airmen could finally drive them away.
Download or read book Blackett s War written by Stephen Budiansky and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Notable Book In March 1941, after a year of devastating U-boat attacks, the British War Cabinet turned to an intensely private, bohemian physicist named Patrick Blackett to turn the tide of the naval campaign. Though he is little remembered today, Blackett did as much as anyone to defeat Nazi Germany, by revolutionizing the Allied anti-submarine effort through the disciplined, systematic implementation of simple mathematics and probability theory. This is the story of how British and American civilian intellectuals helped change the nature of twentieth-century warfare, by convincing disbelieving military brass to trust the new field of operational research.
Download or read book The Boys in the Boat Movie Tie In written by Daniel James Brown and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for the Major Motion Picture Directed by George Clooney—exclusively in theaters December 25, 2023! The #1 New York Times bestselling true story about the American rowing triumph of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—from the author of Facing the Mountain For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.
Download or read book The U Boat Wars written by Edwin P. Hoyt and published by Cooper Square Press. This book was released on 2002-03-04 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkably effective submarines (U-boats) of the German Navy devastated the Allies during the first part of World War II and very nearly brought British and American sea forces to their knees. Military historian Hoyt here describes the years when U-boat "wolf packs" under the command of Admiral Karl Doenitz terrorized the Allies, sinking a third of Britain's battleships in 1939, and how the Allies came back, developing anti-submarine weapons that sent almost three-fourths of the U-boat crews to the bottom of the ocean. The U-Boat Wars is a gripping account of the battles at sea and the men—Doenitz, Churchill, sub-hunter Captain F. J. Walker, and others—who decided the fate of the Atlantic.
Download or read book How the War Was Won written by Phillips Payson O'Brien and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than of land supremacy. He shows how the Allies developed a predominance of air and sea power which put unbearable pressure on Germany and Japan's entire war-fighting machine from Europe and the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Air and sea power dramatically expanded the area of battle and allowed the Allies to destroy over half of the Axis' equipment before it had even reached the traditional 'battlefield'. Battles such as El Alamein, Stalingrad and Kursk did not win World War II; air and sea power did.
Download or read book Why the Allies Won written by R. J. Overy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Overy has written a masterpiece of analytical history, posing and answering one of the great questions of the century."--Sunday Times (London)
Download or read book U boats in Camera 1939 1945 written by Jak P. Mallmann Showell and published by Sutton Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume charts the life of a German U-boat from construction through to active service, and looks at commissioning, sea trials and the first patrol of a typical boat during World War II. This illustrated book also offers a glimpse at domestic life on board a German U-boat, focusing on what the ordinary seaman would have seen and experienced during his first weeks aboard a brand new boat. The author draws on the extensive archives of the German U-boat Archive and many of the photos that appear in the book are previously unpublished. Comprehensive captions describe in detail the many aspects of a U-boat at war, from the boat itself, to the crew and its personalities, life above and below the waves, and the weapons and radar with which it fought Allied shipping. This book affords an insight into this much-feared weapon of World War II, and should appeal to all with an interest in the armed forces of the Third Reich.
Download or read book Unfit For Command written by John E. O'Neill and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-08-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What sort of combination of hypocrite and paradox is John Kerry?" asks this heated critique of the Democratic presidential candidate’s Vietnam–era military service and antiwar activism. O’Neill, a lawyer and swift boat veteran, and Corsi, an expert on Vietnam antiwar movements, show how Kerry misrepresented his wartime exploits and is therefore incompetent to serve as commander in chief. Buttressed by interviews with Navy veterans who patrolled Vietnam’s waters, some along with Kerry, readers will discover how he exaggerated minor injuries, self-inflicted others, wrote fictitious diary entries and filed "phony" reports of his heroism under fire—all in a calculated quest to secure career-enhancing combat medals.
Download or read book Silent Hunters written by Theodore P. Savas and published by Savas Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-25 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The compelling true stories of six little-known U-boat commanders and their dramatic WWII careers. When World War II erupted across Europe in 1939, Germany knew it couldn’t hope to compete with the Royal Navy in a head-to-head naval war. Left with no viable alternatives, the U-Bootwaffe wagered everything on the submarine in a desperate attempt to sink more tonnage than the Allies could construct. Some of these “silent hunters” who slipped out of their shelters along Europe's shores to stalk their prey have enjoyed considerable recognition in the years since. While most aspects of the bitter struggle have been told and retold from both the Axis and Allied points of view, the careers of some highly effective U-boat commanders have languished in undeserved obscurity. The profiles of six such commanders are presented in this collection of essays. They include Englebert Endrass, whose spectacular career before being lost off the coast of Gibraltar is described here by his best friend and fellow ace Enrich Topp, who wrote this while on his fifteenth War Patrol; Karl-Friedrich Merten, who was ranked among the war’s top tonnage aces; Ralph Kapitsky, whose U-615 suicidal surface-to-air battle in the Caribbean allowed many of his fellow submariners to escape into the Atlantic; Fritz Guggenberger, who sank an aircraft carrier and organized the biggest POW escape attempt in American history; Victor Oehrn, a former staff officer of Karl Dönitz's; and Heinz Eck, who was executed by the British. Includes photographs
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.
