The realities of WWII underwater warfare come to life in this chronicle of a submarine sunk in the Philippines—and the remarkable sailors who survived.The fate of the USS Flier is one of the most astonishing stories of the Second World War. On August 13, 1944, the submarine struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Sulu Sea in less than one minute, leaving only fourteen of its crew of eighty-six hands alive. After enduring eighteen hours in the water, eig...

The U.S. and the War in the Pacific, 1941-45 analyzes the Pacific War with a focus on America’s participation in the conflict.Fought over a great ocean and vast battlefields using the most sophisticated weapons available, the Pacific War transformed the modern world. Not only did it introduce the atomic bomb to the world, it also reshaped relations among nations and the ways in which governments dealt with their own peoples, changed the balance of power in the Pacific in f...

On 12 September 1944, a wolfpack of U.S. submarines attacked the Japanese convoy HI-72 in the South China Sea. Among the ships sunk were two carrying Allied prisoners of war. Men who had already endured the trials of Japanese captivity faced a renewed struggle for survival at sea.This book tells the broader story of the HI-72 convoy through the stories of two survivors: Arthur Bancroft, who was rescued by an American submarine, and Charles "Rowley" Richards, who was rescued by the ...

Only seven U.S. submariners earned the Medal of Honor in World War II. Sam Dealey, the USS Harder's commander, was one of them. His honor was awarded posthumously after the entire crew was lost off Bataan during a depth-charge attack in August 1944 by a Japanese convoy. The Harder's fighting spirit is legendary, and its record of sinking a total of eighteen enemy ships (with a tonnage in excess of 55,000) made Dealey one of the top five submarine skippers in the war. Duri...

World War II submariners rarely experienced anything as exhilarating or horrifying as the surface gun attack. Between the ocean floor and the rolling whitecaps above, submarines patrolled a dark abyss in a fusion of silence, shadows, and steel, firing around eleven thousand torpedoes, sinking Japanese men-of-war and more than one thousand merchant ships. But the anonymity and simplicity of the stealthy torpedo attack hid the savagery of warfare—a stark difference from the brutality of the ...

World War II submariners rarely experienced anything as exhilarating or horrifying as the surface gun attack. Between the ocean floor and the rolling whitecaps above, submarines patrolled a dark abyss in a fusion of silence, shadows, and steel, firing around eleven thousand torpedoes, sinking Japanese men-of-war and more than one thousand merchant ships. But the anonymity and simplicity of the stealthy torpedo attack hid the savagery of warfare—a stark difference from the brutality of the ...

From unpromising beginnings in March 1942, the Allied submarine base at Fremantle on the west coast of Australia became a vital part of the Allied offensive against Japan. Pushed back from the Philippines and the Netherlands’ East Indies, American submariners, accompanied by a small group of Dutch forces, retreated to Fremantle as a last resort. The location was chosen for its good harbor and the fact that it was outside the range of land-based Japanese aircraft. Unfortunately the base was...

A Cold War disaster that took ninety-nine lives, and was denied for forty years—what really happened to the USS Scorpion?May 1968: An American submarine is sent to investigate suspicious Soviet ships gathered in the mid-Atlantic. No one aboard the USS Scorpion was aware of the trap they rode into—that the Soviets planned revenge for the mysterious sinking of a Russian sub two months before…or that a traitor has been supplying the KGB with the US N...

A COMBAT ACE’S ACCOUNT OF PILOTING THE GREATEST SINGLE-SEAT FIGHTER IN WORLD WAR IIWorld War II marked the end of an era; fighter pilots still flew by the seat of their pants, and George Loving recaptures the exhilarating world of aerial combat in all its stark terror and fiery glory. His first fighter was the famed Spitfire, hero of the Battle of Britain. By 1943, however, it was obsolescent and did not match up well against the first-line German Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. Ye...

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir of U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, and the source for Clint Eastwood’s blockbuster, Academy-Award nominated movie."An amazingly detailed account of fighting in Iraq—a humanizing, brave story that’s extremely readable." — PATRICIA CORNWELL, New York Times Book Review**"Jaw-dropping...Undeniably riveting." *—***RICHARD ROEPER, Chicago Sun-Times...

In May 2000 the British nuclear hunter-killer submarine HMS Tireless limped into Gibraltar using emergency propulsion and with her nuclear reactor shut down. Days earlier, while traversing the Straits of Sicily the crew had discovered a crack in one of the nuclear reactor pipes, requiring the immediate shutting down of the reactor to prevent a potential reactor accident, an operation never before conducted on a British submarine at sea. Th e previous six days had been a difficult time for ...

This riveting New York Times bestseller tells of the shocking true story of a rogue Soviet submarine poised for a nuclear strike on the United States, “reveal[ing] the explosive facts about one of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War” (The Flint Journal).On March 7, 1968, several hundred miles northwest of Hawaii, the nuclear-armed K-129 surfaced and sunk, taking its crewmen and officers with it to perish at sea. Who was commanding the rogue Russ...