Radioman
Radioman

Author: Carol Edgemon Hipperson

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2008-10-28

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1429994185

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Radioman is the biography of Ray Daves, a noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Navy and an eyewitness to World War II. It is based on the author's handwritten notes from a series of interviews that began on the eighty-second birthday of the combat veteran and gives a first-person account of the world's first battles between aircraft carriers. Ray Daves grew up on a small farm near Little Rock, Arkansas. Impatient with school and the prospect of becoming a farmer like his father, he joined the CCC and went from there to the navy, where he learned to use the radio to send messages, and soon found himself in the momentary peacefulness of Pearl Harbor. Most of America's World War II veterans were not in uniform when the war began. Daves is one of the few who was. He could also tell what was happening on the bridge of the famous carrier Yorktown before it went down and of the secretive relationship between the Russian and American forces in Alaska at the time. Carol Edgemon Hipperson's discovery of this one man's inspiring story is shared with great skill and energy. A must-read for those looking for a personal, intimate account of the events of this tumultuous time in American history.

Ask the Chief
Ask the Chief

Author: John F Leahy

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2012-10-11

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1612512313

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Whenever sailors are confronted with 'unsolvable' problems--be it a fouled anchor or paint that won't dry--they often throw up their hands and exclaim, 'We'd better ask the Chief.' That refrain, heard for generations throughout the Navy, is the theme for Jack Leahy's newest book. Written at sea, his book provides a compelling picture of the Chief Petty Officer's community in the U.S. Navy. As a guest of the Chief Petty Officer's mess aboard USS George Washington during Operation Enduring Freedom, Leahy was granted complete and unfettered access to all areas of the massive carrier and the other ships in her battle group. He interviewed nearly one hundred Navy Chiefs from the aviation, surface, submarine, and special warfare communities and recounts their stories of daily life at sea. In doing so, he presents the true backbone of the modern Navy: the wisdom, character, and dignity of the Chief Petty Officer's community. This book of contemporaneous oral history follows the format that proved so successful with Leahy's earlier book on Navy boot camp. Color photographs help bring the story to life.

Dark Signals
Dark Signals

Author: Si Dunn

Publisher:

Published: 2012-03

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780985173500

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In August, 1964, a young U.S. Navy radio operator found himself in waters he had never heard of, participating in the expansion of a war in a nation he didn't know existed: Vietnam. What he learned from actions he witnessed and the classified messages he handled over the next 10 months left him shaken, disillusioned, and full of questions about America's responses to events in the Tonkin Gulf and South China Sea, including the rush to bomb North Vietnam and the Johnson Administration's decisions to vastly expand the presence of U.S. ground, air, and naval forces in Southeast Asia. Some within the U.S. 7th Fleet knew almost from the outset that the still-controversial "second attack" which triggered the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution did not involve North Vietnamese PT boats firing on U.S. Navy destroyers in pitch-dark seas. What it did involve, others have since shown, was something simpler and much stranger. This is one sailor's memories of being present at the ragged beginnings of a long conflict that ultimately failed and cost 58,000 American lives.