LSM 215 Veteran William M. Craighead recounts his memoirs of LSM 215 life during World War II. *Read about the USS LSM 215 with its crew of young men, two-thirds of whom were younger than 20; and their 22 months together aboard ship. Coming from all parts of America, most had never been to sea before. Traveling on the open ocean on a landing craft became a staggering adventure but they learned to adapt to long periods at sea on a vessel with a shallow draft and no keel... *The part LSM 215 played in the war in the Pacific...the invasion of Okinawa. The historic battle included the largest onslaught of the war by suicidal kamikaze pilots. It was at Okinawa that the Navy suffered its heaviest losses in ships and manpower during World War II. Miraculously, all the crew survived with two shipmates receiving the Purple Heart as a result of kamikaze attacks... *Their journey as they took occupation troops and supplies into Northern China, a China still ancient and medieval. Finally, homeward bound, after only a few days at sea, the ship began to leak badly at several vulnerable locations. Read how the crew worked day and night for two weeks, manning the pumps until the got to Pearl Harbor. They were going home, so it was ALL AHEAD FULL! *And much more...
"Remember, you are not going out there to start a war," Rear Admiral Frank Johnson reminded Commander Pete Bucher just prior to the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. Pueblo. And yet a war-one that might have gone nuclear-was what nearly happened when the Pueblo was attacked and captured by North Korean gunships in January 1968. Diplomacy prevailed in the end, but not without great cost to the lives of the imprisoned crew and to a nation already mired in an unwinnable war in Vietnam. The Pueblo was an aging cargo ship poorly refurbished as a signals intelligence collector for the top-secret Operation Clickbeetle. It was sent off with a first-time captain, an inexperienced crew, and no back-up, and was captured well before the completion of its first mission. Ignored for a quarter of a century, the Pueblo incident has been the subject of much polemic but no scholarly scrutiny. Mitchell Lerner now examines for the first time the details of this crisis and uses the incident as a window through which to better understand the limitations of American foreign policy during the Cold War. Drawing on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents from President Lyndon Johnson's administration, along with dozens of interviews with those involved, Lerner provides the most complete and accurate account of the Pueblo incident. He weaves on a grand scale a dramatic story of international relations, presidential politics, covert intelligence, capture on the high seas, and secret negotiations. At the same time, he highlights the very intimate struggles of the Pueblo's crew-through capture, imprisonment, indoctrination, torture, and release-and the still smoldering controversy over Commander Bucher's actions. In fact, Bucher emerges here for the first time as the truly steadfast hero his men have always considered him. More than an account of misadventure, The Pueblo Incident is an indictment of Cold War mentality that shows how the premises underlying the Pueblo's risky mission and the ensuing efforts to win the release of her crew were seriously flawed. Lerner argues that had U.S. policymakers regarded the North Koreans as people with a national agenda rather than one serving a global Communist conspiracy, they might have avoided the crisis or resolved it more effectively. He also addresses such unanswered questions as what the Pueblo's mission exactly was, why the ship had no military support, and how damaging the intelligence loss was to national security. With North Korea still seen as a rogue state by some policymakers, The Pueblo Incident provides key insights into the domestic imperatives behind that country's foreign relations. It astutely assesses the place of gunboat diplomacy in the modern world and is vital for understanding American foreign policy failures in the Cold War.
When love simmers between a reclusive scientist and a wealthy debutante, will they abandon ship or is it full steam ahead? Nicole Renard returns home to Galveston, Texas, to find her father deathly ill. Though she loves him, Nicole's father has always focused on what she's not. Not male. Not married. Not able to run Renard Shipping. Vowing to find a suitable husband to give her father the heir he desires before it's too late, Nicole sets out with the Renard family's greatest treasure as her dowry: the highly coveted Lafitte Dagger. But her father's rivals come after the dagger, forcing a change in Nicole's plans. After a boiler explosion aboard the Louisiana nearly took his life, Darius Thornton has been a man obsessed. He will do anything to stop even one more steamship disaster. Even if it means letting a female secretary into his secluded world. Nicole is determined not to let her odd employer scare her off with his explosive experiments, yet when respect and mutual attraction grow between them, a new fear arises. How can she acquire an heir for her father when her heart belongs to another? And when her father's rivals discover her hiding place, will she have to choose between that love and her family's legacy?
Presents information about submarines, from providing a room-by-room tour of a typical vessel to analyzing the history of submarines during wars and on maneuvers.
Lieutenant Anthony Pacino reports aboard the “project boat” USS Vermont two years after having survived the catastrophic sinking of the Piranha. Pacino quickly learns that Vermont’s missions are all ultra-secret with the boat reporting only to the Sub Force commander, the National Security Advisor and the President: Vermont does the dirty deeds that need doing in deadly silence and obscurity. After Vermont misses the mark on an easy mission, there are questions asked about her ability to conduct the next mission, one that is vital to the security of the United States and the future of the submarine force. Vermont is tasked with stealing a revolutionary submarine that the Russians are testing with an Iranian crew because it’s too risky to use Russian sailors. It’s a high-stakes gamble for all involved, with the losers vanishing if things go wrong, the winners validating a world-changing technology. Pacino is part of the mission to steal the submarine, but the toughest obstacle is a wolf-pack of Russians coming to the defense of the Iranian submarine. Getting it back to the United States for evaluation becomes secondary to surviving an exchange of missiles and torpedoes in an underwater battle that threatens to let the final genie out of the bottle. *** “DiMercurio has used the last decade to refine his writing and produce the best naval thriller in decades. I couldn’t put it down.” Joseph Courtemanche, author of Assault on Saint Agnes.
