In the spirit of his successful books At Ease and Men of WWII, Evan Bachner now focuses on the women of WWII. While traditionally female secretarial and clerical jobs took an expectedly large portion of recruits, thousands of WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) performed previously atypical duties in the aviation community - such as Judge Advocate General corps - medical professions, communications, intelligence, science, and technology. The photography team, headed by legendary photographer Edward Steichen, captured these heroic women at work, rest, and play. All the photos are from the National Archives and most have not been previously published.
Capt. Edward “Ned” Latimer Beach, Jr. USN is known primarily for his bestselling novel Run Silent, Run Deep, which was made into a film in 1958 with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster and his record setting voyage as commanding officer of USS Triton (SSN(R) 586), that was the first submarine to circumnavigate of the globe while submerged. A highly-decorated United States Navy submarine officer, during World War II, he participated in the Battle of Midway as well as other 12 combat patrols, earning 10 decorations for gallantry, including the Navy Cross. His career also offers insights into the inner workings of power, from inside the Pentagon in the years right after World War II, to inside of the Eisenhower White House, to the politics of the Republican Party in the United States Senate in the 1970s,. In addition to serving as an officer aboard U.S. submarines in the Pacific during World War II, he was a prolific author publishing two novels in addition Run Silent, Run Deep, as well as numerous works on naval history. Ned Beach is a biography that weaves together the personal, professional and writing life of a man who for many was the public face of the submarine community in the years after the Second World War. With a father, who was a naval officer and the author of thirteen published novels in the 1910s & ‘20s, as the eldest son Ned Beach was greatly influenced to follow in his father’s footsteps and to become both an officer and a writer. From his youth in Palo Alto, California during the Great Depression to his service in the Pacific in the war against Japan to the epic submerged circumnavigation of the globe in early 1960 commanding one of the early nuclear powered submarines, Ned Beach’s career encompasses a revolutionary period in American naval history. Not only did he experience it, he wrote about it. This book tells the story of his remarkable life, career and writing.
The only comparative analysis available of the great navies of World War I, this work studies the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, the German Kaiserliche Marine, the United States Navy, the French Marine Nationale, the Italian Regia Marina, the Austro-Hungarian Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine, and the Imperial Russian Navy to demonstrate why the war was won, not in the trenches, but upon the waves. It explains why these seven fleets fought the way they did and why the war at sea did not develop as the admiralties and politicians of 1914 expected. After discussing each navy’s goals and circumstances and how their individual characteristics impacted the way they fought, the authors deliver a side-by-side analysis of the conflict’s fleets, with each chapter covering a single navy. Parallel chapter structures assure consistent coverage of each fleet—history, training, organization, doctrine, materiel, and operations—and allow readers to easily compare information among the various navies. The book clearly demonstrates how the naval war was a collision of 19th century concepts with 20th century weapons that fostered unprecedented development within each navy and sparked the evolution of the submarine and aircraft carrier. The work is free from the national bias that infects so many other books on World War I navies. As they pioneer new ways of viewing the conflict, the authors provide insights and material that would otherwise require a massive library and mastery of multiple languages. Such a study has special relevance today as 20th-century navies struggle to adapt to 21st-century technologies.
This book explores the political emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy between 1868 and 1922. It fundamentally challenges the popular notion that the navy was a 'silent,' apolitical service. Politics, particularly budgetary politics, became the primary domestic focus—if not the overriding preoccupation—of Japan's admirals in the prewar period. This study convincingly demonstrates that as the Japanese polity broadened after 1890, navy leaders expanded their political activities to secure appropriations commensurate with the creation of a world-class blue-water fleet. The navy's sophisticated political efforts included lobbying oligarchs, coercing cabinet ministers, forging alliances with political parties, occupying overseas territories, conducting well-orchestrated naval pageants, and launching spirited propaganda campaigns. These efforts succeeded: by 1921 naval expenditures equaled nearly 32 percent of the country's total budget, making Japan the world's third-largest maritime power. The navy, as this book details, made waves at sea and on shore, and in doing so significantly altered the state, society, politics, and empire in prewar Japan.
To Rule the Waves tells the extraordinary story of how the British Royal Navy allowed one nation to rise to a level of power unprecedented in history. From the navy's beginnings under Henry VIII to the age of computer warfare and special ops, historian Arthur Herman tells the spellbinding tale of great battles at sea, heroic sailors, violent conflict, and personal tragedy -- of the way one mighty institution forged a nation, an empire, and a new world. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
A navy is a state's main instrument of maritime force. What it should do, what doctrine it holds, what ships it deploys, and how it fights are determined by practical political and military choices in relation to national needs. Choices are made according to the state's goals, perceived threat, maritime opportunity, technological capabilities, practical experience, and, not the least, the way the sea service defines itself and its way of war. This book is a history of the modern U.S. Navy. It explains how the Navy, in the century after 1890, was formed and reformed in the interaction of purpose, experience, and doctrine.
From a brilliant Brookings Institution expert, an “important” (The Wall Street Journal) and “penetrating historical and political study” (Nature) of the critical role that oceans play in the daily struggle for global power, in the bestselling tradition of Robert Kaplan’s The Revenge of Geography. For centuries, oceans were the chessboard on which empires battled for supremacy. But in the nuclear age, air power and missile systems dominated our worries about security, and for the United States, the economy was largely driven by domestic production, with trucking and railways that crisscrossed the continent serving as the primary modes of commercial transit. All that has changed, as nine-tenths of global commerce and the bulk of energy trade is today linked to sea-based flows. A brightly painted forty-foot steel shipping container loaded in Asia with twenty tons of goods may arrive literally anywhere else in the world; how that really happens and who actually profits from it show that the struggle for power on the seas is a critical issue today. Now, in vivid, closely observed prose, Bruce Jones conducts us on a fascinating voyage through the great modern ports and naval bases—from the vast container ports of Hong Kong and Shanghai to the vital naval base of the American Seventh Fleet in Hawaii to the sophisticated security arrangements in the Port of New York. Along the way, the book illustrates how global commerce works, that we are amidst a global naval arms race, and why the oceans are so crucial to America’s standing going forward. As Jones reveals, the three great geopolitical struggles of our time—for military power, for economic dominance, and over our changing climate—are playing out atop, within, and below the world’s oceans. The essential question, he shows, is this: who will rule the waves and set the terms of the world to come?
It is 1941 and America teeters on the brink of war. Outgoing naval officer Ensign Jim Avery escorts British convoys across the North Atlantic in a brand-new destroyer, the USS Atwood. Back on shore, Boston Navy Yard secretary Mary Stirling does her work quietly and efficiently, happy to be out of the limelight. Yet, despite her reserved nature, she never could back down from a challenge. When evidence of sabotage on the Atwood is found, Jim and Mary must work together to uncover the culprit. A bewildering maze of suspects emerges, and Mary is dismayed to find that even someone close to her is under suspicion. With the increasing pressure, Jim and Mary find that many new challenges--and dangers--await them. Sarah Sundin takes readers to the tense months before the US entered WWII. Readers will encounter German U-boats and torpedoes, along with the explosive power of true love, in this hopeful and romantic story.
