Battleship Commander
Battleship Commander

Author: Paul L Stillwell

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2021-10-15

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1682475948

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is the first-ever biography of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr., who served a key role during World War II in the Pacific. Recognizing the achievements and legacy of one of the war's top combat admirals has been long overdue until now. Battleship Commander explores Lee's life from boyhood in Kentucky through his eventual service as commander of the fast battleships from 1942 to 1945. Paul Stillwell draws on more than 150 first-person accounts from those who knew and served with Lee from boyhood until the time of his death. Said to be down to earth, modest, forgiving, friendly, and with a wry sense of humor, Lee eschewed the media and, to the extent possible, left administrative details to others. Stillwell relates the sequential building of a successful career, illustrating Admiral Lee's focus on operational, tactical, and strategic concerns. During his service in the Navy Department from 1939 to 1942, Lee prepared the U.S. Navy for war at sea, and was involved in inspecting designs for battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers, and destroyers. He sent observers to Britain to report on Royal Navy operations during the war against Germany and made plans to send an action team to mainland China to observe conditions for possible later Allied landings there. Putting his focus on the need to equip U.S. warships with radar and antiaircraft guns, Lee was one of the few flag officers of his generation who understood the tactical advantage of radar, especially during night battles. In 1942 Willis Lee became commander of the first division of fast battleships to operate in the Pacific. During that service, he commanded Task Force 64, which achieved a tide-turning victory in a night battle near Guadalcanal in November 1942. Lee missed two major opportunities for surface actions against the Japanese. In June 1944, in the Marianas campaign, he declined to engage because his ships were not trained adequately to operate together in surface battles. In October 1944, Admiral William Halsey's bungled decisions denied Lee's ships an opportunity for combat. Continuing his career of service near the end of the war, Lee, in the summer of 1945, directed anti-kamikaze research efforts in Casco Bay, Maine. While Lee's wartime successes and failures make for compelling reading, what is here in this biography is a balanced look at the man and officer.

Rear Admiral Herbert V. Wiley
Rear Admiral Herbert V. Wiley

Author: Ernest Marshall

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2018-09-25

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 168247318X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is, simultaneously, a biography of Admiral Herbert Victor Wiley and a history of the U.S. Navy’s lighter-than-air program. As tensions rose between Japan and the U.S. over control of East Asia and the Pacific Ocean, the prospects of war between the two nations increased. The Navy tracked the Germans’ use of zeppelins during the First World War and saw in them an aircraft with the potential to conduct long-range reconnaissance over the oceans – something that could not be achieved by airplanes or surface ships. While rapid progress was being made in manned flight, it was still young enough that the future of LTA vs. HTA flight was unknown. At the time, however, airships had a much greater range than airplanes making them suitable for reconnaissance. In its history, the Navy had four great airships – the U.S.S. Shenandoah, the U.S.S. Los Angeles, the U.S.S. Akron, and the U.S.S. Macon. Wiley served on all four of these airships and the history of these vessels is covered through the career of Wiley. Three of the airships ended in disaster and Wiley survived the crash of two of them. The book explores in detail the events leading to the crash of each airship through examination of the records of the Navy’s Courts of Inquiry that investigated the cause of each crash. The book also tracks issues surrounding the use of non-flammable helium as a lifting gas instead of highly explosive hydrogen used by the Germans. The U.S. had a monopoly on the supply of helium. While Germany sought to purchase helium from the U.S., the government board governing the sale of helium blocked is availability to Germany on the basis it might be used for wartime purposes. Dr. Hugo Eckener had run the Zeppelin works in Friedrichshaven since the end of WWI and he had a vision for LTA flight that was peaceful, including international transoceanic passenger and freight services. The outbreak of WW II ended the zeppeling industry and dashed all of Eckener’s dreams. Following the crash of the Macon, Wiley returned to the surface fleet, eventually becoming Commander of Destroyer Squadron 29 in the Asiatic Fleet shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Naval Order of the U.S.
Naval Order of the U.S.

Author: John C. Rice, Jr.

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 9781563118739

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The origins and history of the Naval Order of the U.S.

US Naval Strategy and National Security
US Naval Strategy and National Security

Author: Sebastian Bruns

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-22

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1317229681

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines US naval strategy and the role of American seapower over three decades, from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. This study uses the concept of seapower as a framework to explain the military and political application of sea power and naval force for the United States of America. It addresses the context in which strategy, and in particular US naval strategy and naval power, evolves and how US naval strategy was developed and framed in the international and national security contexts. It explains what drove and what constrained US naval strategy and examines selected instances where American sea power was directed in support of US defense and security policy ends – and whether that could be tied to what a given strategy proposed. The work utilizes naval capstone documents in the framework of broader maritime conceptual and geopolitical thinking, and discusses whether these documents had lasting influences in the strategic mind-set, the force structure, and other areas of American sea power. Overall, this work provides a deeper understanding of the crafting of US naval strategy since the final decade of the Cold War, its contextual and structural framework setting, and its application. To that end, the work bridges the gap between the thinking of American naval officers and planners on the one hand and academic analyses of Navy strategy on the other hand. It also presents the trends in the use of naval force for foreign policy objectives and into strategy-making in the American policy context. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, maritime strategy, US national security and international relations in general.

Decision at Sea
Decision at Sea

Author: Craig L. Symonds

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006-10-23

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 0199754888

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From thunderous broadsides traded between wooden sailing ships on Lake Erie, to the carrier battles of World War II, to the devastating high-tech action in the Persian Gulf, here is a gripping history of five key battles that defined the evolution of naval warfare--and the course of the American nation. Acclaimed military historian Craig Symonds offers spellbinding narratives of crucial engagements, showing how each battle reveals the transformation of technology and weaponry from one war to the next; how these in turn transformed naval combat; and how each event marked a milestone in American history. - Oliver Hazard Perry's heroic victory at Lake Erie, one of the last great battles of the Age of Sail, which secured the Northwestern frontier for the United States - The brutal Civil War duel between the ironclads Monitor and Virginia, which sounded the death knell for wooden-hulled warships and doomed the Confederacy's hope of besting the Union navy - Commodore Dewey's stunning triumph at Manila Bay in 1898, where the U.S. displayed its "new navy" of steel-hulled ships firing explosive shells and wrested an empire from a fading European power - The hairsbreadth American victory at Midway, where aircraft carriers launched planes against enemies 200 miles away--and where the tide of World War II turned in the space of a few furious minutes - Operation Praying Mantis in the Persian Gulf, where computers, ship-fired missiles, and "smart bombs" not only changed the nature of warfare at sea, but also marked a new era, and a new responsibility, for the United States. Symonds records these encounters in detail so vivid that readers can hear the wind in the rigging and feel the pounding of the guns. Yet he places every battle in a wide perspective, revealing their significance to America's development as it grew from a new Republic on the edge of a threatening frontier to a global superpower. Decision at Sea is a powerful and illuminating look at pivotal moments in the history of the Navy and of the United States. It is also a compelling study of the unchanging demands of leadership at sea, where commanders must make rapid decisions in the heat of battle with lives--and the fate of nations--hanging in the balance.

A Great and Rising Nation
A Great and Rising Nation

Author: Michael A. Verney

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-07-20

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0226819922

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Jeremiah Reynolds and the empire of knowledge -- The United States exploring expedition as Jacksonian capitalism -- The United States exploring expedition in popular culture -- The Dead Sea expedition and the empire of faith -- Proslavery explorations of South America -- Arctic exploration and US-UK rapprochement.

Circular of Information of the Naval Order of the United States
Circular of Information of the Naval Order of the United States

Author: Naval Order of the United States

Publisher:

Published: 2016-06-20

Total Pages: 20

ISBN-13: 9781332833320

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Excerpt from Circular of Information of the Naval Order of the United States: Organized July 4, 1890 The naval order OF the united states developed from an informal gathering, in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1890, of a few persons interested in the naval history of our country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.