During World War II, merchant marine tankers in convoys plied the frozen North Atlantic through the flaming wreckage of torpedoed ships. Working to keep sea lanes open, valiant merchant seamen supplied food, fuel, and goods to the Allies in the last pockets of European resistance to the Nazis.This exciting book acknowledges that the merchant marines, all volunteers, are among the unsung heroes of the war. One of these was Jac Smith, an ordinary seamen on the Cedar Creek, a...

**The definitive biography of the Australian cruiser HMAS Perth, and the brave men who sailed with her.**Of all the Australians who fought in the Second World War, none saw more action nor endured so much of its hardship and horror as the crew of the cruiser HMAS Perth. Most were young - many were still teenagers - from cities and towns, villages and farms across the nation. In three tumultuous years they did battle with the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Vich...

During World War II St. John’s, Newfoundland played a critical role in the fight against Nazi Germany. Seamen from all over the world sailed to and from the old seaport, chosen for duty because it was closest to Europe and because its people knew both the peril and glory of the North Atlantic. In his introduction to this absorbing collection of stories, Bill Rompkey examines the city’s service to one of the most famous battles in military history and the effect it had on the people of St. ...

This account of a disaster at sea during World War II is "a powerful and engrossing story of tragedy, survival, and heroism" (Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down) .In the final days of 1944, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey is the Pacific theater's most popular and colorful naval hero. After a string of victories, the "Fighting Admiral" and his thirty-thousand-man Third Fleet are charged with protecting General MacArthur's flank ...

An ecological hellfire threatens the west coast of North America in this international thriller from the bestselling author of the WWIII novels.In the early dawn fog off the coast of Southern Alaska, two million-ton tankers collide. Both are fully loaded: the American Kodiak with crude oil; the Russian Sakhalin with high octane. It's a nightmare scenario that becomes an international disaster of epic proportions when a single match ignites nearly two thousand squar...

Award-winning historian Mike Walling captures the essence of the Arctic Convoys of World War II.In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest offensive operation ever undertaken. Operation Barbarossa saw defeat after defeat heaped on the Soviet army. With Russia's forces left staggering under the strain and in desperate need of supplies, Britain and the United States launched an ambitious operation to resupply the Soviet Union using convoys sent through ...

Lost at Sea features the incredible stories of eight ships and their passengers, some of which vanished with hardly a trace - or no trace at all. Veteran history and mystery writer A.A.Hoehling explores these previously unexplained maritime mishaps with the skill of a detective seeking to uncover a murderer.

As Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor, an army private commits a simple crime that will change his life foreverRichard Mast is a misfit in the infantry unit at Pearl Harbor. A bright mind in a sea of grunts, his only joy on the morning of December 7, 1941, is that today he has guard duty, which means he gets to carry a pistol. Usually reserved only for officers, the close-quarters weapon is coveted by every man in the infantry for its beauty and the sense of stren...

George Weller was a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who covered World War II across Europe, Africa, and Asia. At the war’s end in September 1945, under General MacArthur’s media blackout, correspondents were forbidden to enter both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But instead of obediently staying with the press corps in northern Japan, Weller broke away. The intrepid newspaperman reached Nagasaki just weeks after the atomic bomb hit the city. Boldly presenting himself as a U.S. colonel to the Japa...

One of the bleakest episodes in Royal Naval history. Here is the inside story as told by the men who survived. It is the story o a brutally hard convoy that, according to official records, was incident free. It is the convoy that, according to official records, was incident free. It is the convoy that the British Admiralty tried to cover up. The Royal Navy betrayed the men of convoy PQ17. An order was issued by the British Admiralty… scatter escorts. These were murderous orders that broke a p...

A blow-by-blow eye-witness account of the British Pacific Fleets participation in the invasion of Okinawa and the attacks on the Japanese homeland.

LOYAL and STEADFAST is the story of HMS CONSORT, a C class destroyer commissioned into the post-World War 2 Royal Navy. During her ten years of service, CONSORT spent nearly all her time in the Far East - participating in the Occupation of Japan, the Malayan Emergency and the Korean War. The book also documents in detail CONSORT's (up until now largely untold and ignored), involvement on 20 April 1949 in the Yangtze Incident. The Montebello Atomic Bomb tests and the Olympic Cruise to Melbo...