Download or read book U S S Houston the Last Flagship of the Asiatic Fleet written by Heber A. Holbrook and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 Cruiser Houston The written by Mark Lardas and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cruiser Houston was the first warship named for the Bayou City, and the ship proved a favorite of the city for which it was named. It was also a favorite of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who traveled on the Houston no fewer than four times. Houston was twice the flagship of the US Navy's Asiatic Fleet. In the opening days of World War II, it battled the Imperial Japanese Navy, culminating in its midnight loss at the Battle of Sunda Strait. The Cruiser Houston tells the story of this magnificent ship and the city of Houston's reaction to its namesake's loss.
Download or read book The Ghost of the Java Coast written by Walter G. Winslow and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the story of the Houston as told by a naval scout plane pilot who lived through her battles. The author's own experiences are enhanced by accounts from others involved, and by official and unofficial documents ... He sheds light on new evidence supporting the contention that the Houston and other Allied warships inflicted a heavier toll on the Imperial Navy than the Japanese have ever been willing to admit. His reconstruction of the two battles and the earlier Battle of the Flores Sea provides a detailed account of these engagements"--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Ship of Ghosts written by James D. Hornfischer and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2009-03-25 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Son, we’re going to Hell." The navigator of the USS Houston confided these prophetic words to a young officer as he and his captain charted a course into U.S. naval legend. Renowned as FDR’s favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest. It wasn’t a fair fight, but the men of the Houston would wage it to the death. Hornfischer brings to life the awesome terror of nighttime naval battles that turned decks into strobe-lit slaughterhouses, the deadly rain of fire from Japanese bombers, and the almost superhuman effort of the crew as they miraculously escaped disaster again and again–until their luck ran out during a daring action in Sunda Strait. There, hopelessly outnumbered, the Houston was finally sunk and its survivors taken prisoner. For more than three years their fate would be a mystery to families waiting at home. In the brutal privation of jungle POW camps dubiously immortalized in such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, the war continued for the men of the Houston—a life-and-death struggle to survive forced labor, starvation, disease, and psychological torture. Here is the gritty, unvarnished story of the infamous Burma–Thailand Death Railway glamorized by Hollywood, but which in reality mercilessly reduced men to little more than animals, who fought back against their dehumanization with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, will–power—and the undying faith that their country would prevail. Using journals and letters, rare historical documents, including testimony from postwar Japanese war crimes tribunals, and the eyewitness accounts of Houston’s survivors, James Hornfischer has crafted an account of human valor so riveting and awe-inspiring, it’s easy to forget that every single word is true. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from James D. Hornfischer's Neptune's Inferno.
Download or read book In the Highest Degree Tragic written by Donald M. Kehn and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2017-08 with total page 795 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Highest Degree Tragic tells the heroic story of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet's sacrifice defending the Dutch East Indies from the Japanese in the first three months of the Pacific War. Donald M. Kehn Jr.'s comprehensive narrative history of the operations involving multiple ships and thousands of men dramatically depicts the chaotic nature of these battles. His research has uncovered evidence of communications failures, vessels sinking hundreds of miles from where they had been reported lost, and entire complements of men simply disappearing off the face of the earth. Kehn notes that much of the fleet went down with guns blazing and flag flying, highlighting, where many others have failed to do so, the political and strategic reasons for the fleet's deployment to the region in the first place. In the Highest Degree Tragic rectifies the historical record, showcasing how brave yet all-too-human sailors and officers carried out their harrowing tasks. Containing rare first-person accounts and anecdotes, from the highest command echelons down to the lowest enlisted personnel, Kehn's book is the most comprehensive and exhaustive study to date of this important part of American involvement in World War II.
Download or read book Playing for Time written by Lodwick H. Alford and published by Merriam Press. This book was released on 2006-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author's memoir of his service as an officer on board the destroyer U.S.S. Stewart (DD-224) of the Asiatic Fleet from before the war through its abandonment in a dry dock in Java in February 1942, also serving as a history of the ship's wartime service. The author also provides a history of the Asiatic Fleet during that time period when it was part of the naval forces that stopped the Japanese juggernaut on their southward expansion in the Pacific.
Download or read book Battle of Surigao Strait written by Anthony P. Tully and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Tully] paints Admiral Nishimura's high-speed run into history with an entirely fresh palette of detail.” —James D. Hornfischer, New York Times–bestselling author of Neptune’s Inferno Surigao Strait in the Philippine Islands was the scene of a major battleship duel during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Because the battle was fought at night and had few survivors on the Japanese side, the events of that naval engagement have been passed down in garbled accounts. Anthony P. Tully pulls together all of the existing documentary material, including newly discovered accounts and a careful analysis of US Navy action reports, to create a new and more detailed description of the action. In several respects, Tully's narrative differs radically from the received versions and represents an important historical corrective. Also included in the book are a number of previously unpublished photographs and charts that bring a fresh perspective to the battle. “By giving a fuller view of the Japanese side, Tully's work forces a substantial revision of the traditional picture of the battle. Battle of Surigao Strait is not only military history based on scrupulous use of a plethora of new source materials, but is a spanking good read. Highly recommended.” —War in History “Tully has managed to trace the complicated flow of and reason for events on the nights of 24-25 October with a skill and aplomb that forces one to reconsider previously held views.” —Naval History
Download or read book The Ghost That Died at Sunda Strait written by Walter G. Winslow and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounting the last stand of the heavy cruiser Houston, this tale of survival brings to life the 1942 battle at Sunda Strait.
Download or read book Last Man Out written by H. Robert Charles and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2006-11-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American Marine recounts his ordeal as a World War II POW forced by the Japanese to build the railway immortalized in The Bridge on the River Kwai. From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, such as a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author. Praise for Last Man Out “A remarkable story, long overdue, of the treatment of POW’s captured by Japan.” —Arthur L. Maher, USN, Senior officer to survive sinking of the USS Houston, POW of the Japanese in World War II “In World War II, to move materials and troops from Japan to Burma by avoiding the perilous sea route around the Malay Peninsula, the Japanese military built a railroad through the jungles of Thailand and Burma at great human cost to its prisoner laborers. Last Man Out is an effective addition to the history of this tragedy.” —Library Journal
Download or read book Beans Bullets and Black Oil written by Worrall Reed Carter and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book W F Matthews written by Travis Monday and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2004 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of a God-and-Country American.
Download or read book A Blue Sea of Blood written by Donald M. Kehn and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2009-01-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the morning of March 1, 1942, the WWI-era destroyer USS Edsall—under orders to deliver some forty Army Air Force fighter crews to the beleaguered island of Java—split off from the USS Whipple and the tanker Pecos and was never seen again by Allied forces. Despite the later discovery of bodies identified as Edsall crew members near a remote airfield on the coast of Celebes, what happened to the ship remains a matter of mystery and, perhaps, deliberate obfuscation. This book explores the many puzzling facets of the Edsall’s disappearance in order to finally tell the full story of the fate of the vessel and her crew. Based on exhaustive research of the historical record—including newly deciphered Japanese documents and previously unrevealed material from the crew’s family members—A Blue Sea of Blood offers a painstaking reconstruction of the ship’s history. The book investigates not only the Edsall’s mysterious final action, but also her wide-ranging pre-war career and the curious uses to which her story was put—generally under false pretenses—first by the pre-war US Navy and then by the Japanese wartime propaganda machine. And finally, military historian Donald Kehn considers the circumstances surrounding the curious obscurity of the Edsall’s heroic service and final battle in American histories. Redressing six decades of official indifference, Kehn’s account recovers a significant chapter missing from the history of World War II—and tells a long-overdue story of courage and tragic loss.
Download or read book Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute written by United States Naval Institute and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Prisoner of the Samurai written by James Gee and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Courage on the River Kwai—the inspiring true story of one marine’s resilience in a World War II POW camp following the Battle of the Sunda Strait. Two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, between the islands of Java and Sumatra, the naval cruiser USS Houston sank after taking four torpedo hits by Imperial Japanese warships. Among the survivors clinging to makeshift rafts was James Gee, PFC, USMC. Rescued by the enemy, Gee was transferred to Rangoon and subjected to hard labor in the construction of the Burma Railway. Here on the muddy banks of the River Kwai, thousands of allied prisoners succumbed to the harsh conditions. Again, Gee survived. But the worst was yet to come. A fresh hell awaited 2,700 miles away: a Japanese POW camp where the young marine would remain until the end of the war. This is the remarkable memoir of one man’s three-year ordeal amid the direst conditions imaginable—and how the compassion and companionship of his fellow allies strengthened his resolve, and turned desperation into an unbeatable will to make it back home alive.
Download or read book Japanese War Fantasy 1933 written by Kyosuke Fukunaga and published by Schiffer + ORM. This book was released on 2023-06-28 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new annotated edition of a shocking Japanese paperback, published in 1933, which foreshadowed a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet. Learn why the original Japanese version was confiscated and banned in the US. The government went as far as to collect books that had already been sold. The original novel was endorsed by two admirals in the Imperial Japanese Navy, both of whom provided forewords for the book. Although explicitly a work of fiction, the book was implicitly a statement of real IJN strategy.
Download or read book Navy Directory written by United States. Navy Department and published by . This book was released on 1939 with total page 2060 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
