Download or read book U Boats Destroyed written by Robert M. Grant and published by Periscope Publishing Ltd.. This book was released on 2002-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War I saw the submarine develop into a potent weapon of war. The German submarine campaign almost defeated Britain during the spring of 1917. By striking at the shipping that supplied her, it has been estimated that Britain came within six weeks of starvation.
Download or read book U boats Destroyed written by Paul Kemp and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hellcats written by Peter Sasgen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heart-stopping true tale of a submarine mission aimed at destroying Japan’s merchant marine lifeline and ending World War II. By 1945, the U.S. Navy's submarine force in the Pacific had sunk over a thousand enemy cargo ships and tankers supplying the food, weapons, and oil Japan needed to continue to fight. Yet this once mighty merchant fleet continued to thrive in the Sea of Japan, where, protected from American submarines by a seemingly impenetrable barrier of deadly minefields, they provided a tenuous lifeline for the Japanese. Senior American commanders believed that if these enemy ships were sunk, Japan would be forced to surrender. Here is the incredible story of Operation Barney, the daring plot to penetrate those minefields and decimate the enemy fleet. The brainchild of the dedicated sub commander Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood, the mission would hinge on a new experimental sonar system that would, with luck, guide American submarines safely past the mines and into the open sea. The nine submarines chosen, nicknamed Hellcats, were tasked with the impossible—the combined crews of 760 submariners all knew their chances of survival depended on an unproven technology and their own nerve. Based on original documents and the poignant personal letters of one doomed Hellcat commander, Sasgen crafts a classic naval tale of one of World War II's most dangerous missions.
Download or read book Verschollen written by Dwight R. Messimer and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For boats listed as verschollen, or lost without a trace, the author includes available explanations for what happened, and when they conflict he analyzes them for accuracy. Each entry is a freestanding narrative that allows readers to focus on a particular submarine. Researchers will appreciate the convenience of the book's format and its inclusive information. Because Messimer provides the approximate locations of many of the wrecks, amateur and professional salvage divers who want to visit wreckage sites will also find the book useful. Photographs, drawings, and maps further illuminate the record."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Neither Sharks Nor Wolves written by Timothy P Mulligan and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although countless books have been written about the U-boat war in the Atlantic, precious few facts have come to light about the men who served in the submarines that wrought such havoc on Allied ships. Eager to get beyond the stereotypes perpetuated in movies and novels and find out who these elusive sailors really were, archivist Timothy Mulligan started searching official records. Eventually he went straight to the source, conducting a survey of more than a thousand U-boat officers and enlisted men and interviewing a number of them personally. The result is this character study of the German submarine force that challenges traditional and revisionist views of the service. Mulligan found striking similarities in the men's geographic and social origins, education, and previous occupations, particularly within the specialized engineering and radio branches of the submarine force. The information he gathered establishes quantifiable patterns in age, length of service, and experience, as well as the organization's overall recruitment policies and training standards. The numbers and losses of U-boat personnel are also fully examined. Beyond these objective characteristics, this study lists such subjective factors as morale, treatment of enemy ship survivors, and the relationship of the submariners to the Nazi regime, and it confirms a serious crisis in morale in late 1943. The roles played by the head of the U-boat arm, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, and its organizational chief, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, are thoroughly addressed. Mulligan concludes that the U-boat arm quickly evolved from a handpicked elite to a more representative sample of the German navy at large but continued to be treated as an elite force. The only comprehensive investigation yet published, this book also draws on POW interrogations of U-boat survivors and documentation of Kriegsmarine personnel policy obtained from German archives.
Download or read book Defeating the U boat written by Jan S. Breemer and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2010 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Defeating the U-boat: Inventing Antisubmarine Warfare, Newport Paper 36, Jan. S. Breemer tells the story of the British response to the German submarine threat. His account of Germany's 'asymmetric' challenge (to use the contemporary term) to Britain's naval mastery holds important lessons for the United States today, the U.S. Navy in particular. The Royal Navy's obstinate refusal to consider seriously the option of convoying merchant vessels, which turned out to be key to the solution of the U-boat problem, demonstrates the extent to which professional military cultures can thwart technical and operational innovation even in circumstances of existential threat. Although historical controversy continues to cloud this issue, ... Breemer ends his lively and informative study with some general reflections on military innovation and the requirements for fostering it. "--Foreword.
Download or read book The Prince written by Niccolo Machiavelli and published by Wyatt North Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2020-06-03 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the 16th century, The Prince remains one of the most influential books on political theory. Its author, Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat and political theorist, and is considered the father of modern political thought.
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 The Defeat of the German U boats written by David Syrett and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The largest, most complex naval battle and its impact on World War II's outcome.
Download or read book Anti Submarine Warfare in World War I written by John Abbatiello and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the employment of British aircraft against German submarines during the final years of the First World War, this new book places anti-submarine campaigns from the air in the wider history of the First World War. The Royal Naval Air Service invested heavily in aircraft of all types—aeroplanes, seaplanes, airships, and kite balloons—in order to counter the German U-boats. Under the Royal Air Force, the air campaign against U-boats continued uninterrupted. Aircraft bombed German U-boat bases in Flanders, conducted area and ‘hunting’ patrols around the coasts of Britain, and escorted merchant convoys to safety. Despite the fact that aircraft acting alone destroyed only one U-boat during the war, the overall contribution of naval aviation to foiling U-boat attacks was significant. Only five merchant vessels succumbed to submarine attack when convoyed by a combined air and surface escort during World War I. This book examines aircraft and weapons technology, aircrew training, and the aircraft production issues that shaped this campaign. Then, a close examination of anti-submarine operations—bombing, patrols, and escort—yields a significantly different judgment from existing interpretations of these operations. This study is the first to take an objective look at the writing and publication of the naval and air official histories as they told the story of naval aviation during the Great War. The author also examines the German view of aircraft effectiveness, through German actions, prisoner interrogations, official histories, and memoirs, to provide a comparative judgment. The conclusion closes with a brief narrative of post-war air anti-submarine developments and a summary of findings. Overall, the author concludes that despite the challenges of organization, training, and production the employment of aircraft against U-boats was largely successful during the Great War. This book will be of interest to historians of naval and air power history, as well as students of World War I and military history in general.
Download or read book Lost Patrols written by Innes McCartney and published by Periscope Publishing Ltd.. This book was released on 2002-12 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings to life the stories of the 121 submarines that lie entombed on the seabed of the English Channel. Most of them got there as the result of war and peacetime accidents. The first was lost in 1774; the last was the tragic accident that befell HMS Affray in 1951, the last British submarine to have been lost at sea.
Download or read book Dead Wake written by Erik Larson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania “Both terrifying and enthralling.”—Entertainment Weekly “Thrilling, dramatic and powerful.”—NPR “Thoroughly engrossing.”—George R.R. Martin 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 passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history. Finalist for the Washington State Book Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami Herald, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, LibraryReads, Indigo
Download or read book O N I Publication written by United States. Office of Naval Intelligence and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Black May written by Michael Gannon and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 1943, Allied sea and air forces won a stunning, dramatic, and vital victory over the largest and most powerful submarine force ever sent to sea, sinking forty-one German U-boats and damaging thirty-seven others. It was the forty-fifth month of World War II, and by the end of May the Germans were forced to acknowledge defeat and recall almost all of their remaining U-boats from the major traffic lanes of the North Atlantic. At U-Boat Headquarters in Berlin, despondent naval officers spoke of "Black May." It was a defeat from which the German U-boat fleet never recovered. Black May is a triumph of scholarship and narrative, an important work of history, and a great sea story. Acclaimed historian Michael Gannon, author of Operation Drumbeat, has done enormous research and produced the most thoroughly documented study ever done of these battles. In his compelling historical saga, the people are as significant as the technical information. Given the strategic importance of the events of May 1943, it is natural to ask, How did Black May happen and why? Who or what was responsible? Were new Allied tactics adopted or new weapons employed? This book answers those questions and many others. Drawing on original documents in German, British, U.S., and Canadian archives, as well as interviews with surviving participants, Gannon describes the exciting sea and air battles, frequently taking the reader inside the U-boats themselves, aboard British warships, onto the decks of torpedoed merchant ships, and into the cockpits of British and U.S. aircraft. Throughout, Gannon tells the Black May story from both the German and Allied perspectives, often using the actual words of captains and crews. Finally, he allows the reader to "listen in" on secretly recorded conversations of captured U-boat men in POW quarters during that same incredible month, giving intimate and moving access to the thoughts and emotions of seamen that is unparalleled in naval literature. Rarely, if ever, has the U-boat war been presented so accurately, so graphically, and so personally as in Black May.
Download or read book Splinter Fleet written by Theodore R Treadwell and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hastily built at the onset of World War II to stop German U-boats from taking their toll on Allied shipping, the 110-foot wooden subchasers were the smallest commissioned warships in the U.S. Navy, yet they saw as much action as ships ten times their size. In every theater of war these “expendable” workhorses of the fleet escorted countless convoys of slow-moving ships through submarine-infested waters, conducted endless mind-numbing antisubmarine patrols, and were used in hundreds of amphibious operations. Some subchasers worked as gunboats to search for and destroy enemy barges. Others rescued downed airmen and retrieved drowning soldiers under heavy enemy fire. During the German occupation of Norway, three American-built subchasers and their Norwegian crews came to be known as “The Shetlands Bus” for their clandestine work as ferries—the only link between Norway and the free world. This book, written by the commander of one of the subchasers, defines their place in naval history and gives readers a taste of life on board the wooden warships. Ringing with authenticity, it describes the cramped quarters and unforgiving seas as well as the tenacious courage and close bonds formed by the men as they sought out the enemy and confronted nature. Long overshadowed by the larger, faster warships and more glamorous PT boats of World War II, subchasers have been mostly forgotten. This work restores the plucky little ships to their hard-earned status as significant members of the fleet.
Download or read book Forgotten Fifteenth written by Barrett Tillman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: November 1943—May 1945—The U.S. Army Air Forces waged an unprecedentedly dogged and violent campaign against Hitler’s vital oil production and industrial plants on the Third Reich’s southern flank. Flying from southern Italy, far from the limelight enjoyed by the Eighth Air Force in England, the Fifteenth Air Force engaged in high-risk missions spanning most of the European continent. The story of the Fifteenth Air Force deserves a prideful place in the annals of American gallantry. In his new book, Forgotten Fifteenth: The Daring Airmen Who Crippled Hitler’s War Machine, Tillman brings into focus a seldom-seen multinational cast of characters, including pilots from Axis nations Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria and many more remarkable individuals. They were the first generation of fliers—few of them professionals—to conduct a strategic bombing campaign against a major industrial nation. They suffered steady attrition and occasionally spectacular losses. In so doing, they contributed to the end of the most destructive war in history. Forgotten Fifteenth is the first-ever detailed account of the Fifteenth Air Force in World War II and the brave men that the history books have abandoned until now. Tillman proves this book is a must-read for military history enthusiasts, veterans, and current servicemen.
Download or read book The U Boat War written by Ian Baxter and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2009-03-09 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2.20PM Directly in front of us I sighted four funnels and the masts of a passenger steamer at right angles to our course coming from the SW and going towards Galley Head. 3:10 PM Torpedo shot at a distance of 700 meters below the surface - from the log of the German submarine U–20. The explosion that followed changed history as the date of the ship's log was may 7, 1915, the steamer was the Lusitania, and the torpedo sent 1195 innocent men, women, and children to a watery grave. In 1914, U-Boats were a new and untried weapon, and when such a weapon can bring a mighty empire to the briink of defeat there is a story worth telling. Edwyn Gray's The U-Boat War is the history of the Kaiser's attempt to destroy the British Empire by a ruthless campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. It opens with Germany's first tentative experiments with the submarines and climaxes with the naval mutiny that helped bring down the Kaiser. In between is is a detailed account of a campaign of terror which, by April 1917,had the British Empire on the verge of surrender. The cost in lives and equipment was staggering. On the German side, 4894 sailors and 515 officers lost their lives in action; 178 German Submarines were destroyed by the allies; 14 were scuttled and 122 surrendered. According to the most reliable sources, 5,708 ships were destroyed by the U-Boats and 13,333 non-combatants perished in British Ships. World figures for civilian casualties were never released The U-Boat War is a savage but thrilling account of men fighting for their lives beneath the sea, and of the boats that changed the face of naval warfare.
