Tin Can Titans

Download or read book Tin Can Titans written by John Wukovits and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An epic narrative of World War II naval action that brings to life the sailors and exploits of the war's most decorated destroyer squadron. When Admiral William Halsey selected Destroyer Squadron 21 (Desron 21) to lead his victorious ships into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender, it was the most battle-hardened US naval squadron of the war. But it was not the squadron of ships that had accumulated such an inspiring resume; it was the people serving aboard them. Sailors, not metallic superstructures and hulls, had won the battles and become the stuff of legend. Men like Commander Donald MacDonald, skipper of the USS O'Bannon, who became the most decorated naval officer of the Pacific war; Lieutenant Hugh Barr Miller, who survived his ship's sinking and waged a one-man battle against the enemy while stranded on a Japanese-occupied island; and Doctor Dow "Doc" Ransom, the beloved physician of the USS La Vallette, who combined a mixture of humor and medical expertise to treat his patients at sea, epitomize the sacrifices made by all the men and women of World War II. Through diaries, personal interviews with survivors, and letters written to and by the crews during the war, preeminent historian of the Pacific theater John Wukovits brings to life the human story of the squadron that bested the Japanese in the Pacific and helped take the war to Tokyo.

Download or read book Tin Can Sailor written by C. Raymond Calhoun and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 800 sailors served aboard the Sterett during her hazardous and demanding duties in World War II. This is the story of those men and their beloved ship, recorded by a junior officer who served on the famous destroyer from her commissioning in 1939 to April 1943.

Download or read book Tin Cans and Greyhounds written by Clint Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For men on destroyer-class warships during World War I and World War II, battles were waged “against overwhelming odds from which survival could not be expected.” Those were the words Lieutenant Commander Robert Copeland calmly told his crew as their tiny, unarmored destroyer escort rushed toward giant, armored Japanese battleships at the Battle off Samar on October 25, 1944. This action-packed narrative history of destroyer-class ships brings readers inside the half-inch-thick hulls to meet the men who fired the ships' guns, torpedoes, hedgehogs, and depth charges. Nicknamed "tin cans" or "greyhounds," destroyers were fast escort and attack ships that proved indispensable to America's military victories. Beginning with destroyers' first incarnation as torpedo boats in 1874 and ending with World War II, author Clint Johnson shares the riveting stories of the Destroyer Men who fought from inside a "tin can"—risking death by cannons, bombs, torpedoes, fire, and drowning. The British invented destroyers, the Japanese improved them, and the Germans failed miserably with them. It was the Americans who perfected destroyers as the best fighting ship in two world wars. Tin Cans & Greyhounds compares the designs of these countries with focus on the old, modified World War I destroyers, and the new and numerous World War II destroyers of the United States. Tin Cans & Greyhounds details how destroyers fought submarines, escorted convoys, rescued sailors and airmen, downed aircraft, shelled beaches, and attacked armored battleships and cruisers with nothing more than a half-inch of steel separating their crews from the dark waves.

Download or read book The Chosen Few written by Gregg Zoroya and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The never-before-told story of one of the most decorated units in the war in Afghanistan and its fifteen-month ordeal that culminated in the 2008 Battle of Wanat, the war's deadliest A single company of US paratroopers--calling themselves the "Chosen Few"--arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle, living under almost continuous attack, forced into a slow and grinding withdrawal, and always outnumbered by Taliban fighters descending on them from all sides. Month after month, rocket-propelled grenades, rockets, and machine-gun fire poured down on the isolated and exposed paratroopers as America's focus and military resources shifted to Iraq. Just weeks before the paratroopers were to go home, they faced their last--and toughest--fight. Near the village of Wanat in Nuristan province, an estimated three hundred enemy fighters surrounded about fifty of the Chosen Few and others defending a partially finished combat base. Nine died and more than two dozen were wounded that day in July 2008, making it arguably the bloodiest battle of the war in Afghanistan. The Chosen Few would return home tempered by war. Two among them would receive the Medal of Honor. All of them would be forever changed.

Download or read book Japanese Destroyer Captain written by Tameichi Hara and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly regarded war memoir was a best seller in both Japan and the United States during the 1960s and has long been treasured by historians for its insights into the Japanese side of the surface war in the Pacific. The author was a survivor of more than one hundred sorties against the Allies and was known throughout Japan as the "Unsinkable Captain." A hero to his countrymen, Capt. Hara exemplified the best in Japanese surface commanders: highly skilled (he wrote the manual on torpedo warfare), hard driving, and aggressive. Moreover, he maintained a code of honor worthy of his samurai grandfather, and, as readers of this book have come to appreciate, he was as free with praise for American courage and resourcefulness as he was critical of himself and his senior commanders.

Download or read book Devotion to Duty written by John F. Wukovits and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2020-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography of the Admiral credited with turning the Leyte Gulf battle from defeat to victory in 1944 and who ordered the first shot against the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. John F. Wukovits uses primary source materials that include handwritten commentary on the battle of Leyte. Although a life biographer, the focus is on Sprague's contributions to naval aviation, and method of command, particularly at the Battle of Samar Island.

Download or read book Dark Waters, Starry Skies written by Jeffrey Cox and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-02 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Esteemed Pacific War historian Jeffrey Cox has produced a fast-paced and absorbing read of the crucial New Georgia phase of the Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign during the Pacific War. Thousands of miles from friendly ports, the US Navy had finally managed to complete the capture of Guadalcanal from the Japanese in early 1943. Now the Allies sought to keep the offensive momentum won at such a high cost. This is the central plotline running through this page-turning history beginning with the Japanese Operation I-Go and the American ambush of Admiral Yamamoto and continuing on to the Allied invasion of New Georgia, northwest of Guadalcanal in the middle of the Solomon Islands and the location of a major Japanese base. Determined not to repeat their mistakes at Guadalcanal, the Allies nonetheless faltered in their continuing efforts to roll back the Japanese land, air and naval forces. Using first-hand accounts from both sides, this book vividly recreates all the terror and drama of the nighttime naval battles during this phase of the Solomons campaign and the ferocious firestorm many Marines faced as they disembarked from their landing craft. The reader is transported to the bridge to stand alongside Admiral Walden Ainsworth as he sails to stop another Japanese reinforcement convoy for New Georgia, and vividly feels the fear of an 18-year-old Marine as he fights for survival against a weakened but still determined enemy. Dark Waters, Starry Skies is an engrossing history which weaves together strategy and tactics with a blow-by-blow account of every battle at a vital point in the Pacific War that has not been analyzed in this level of detail before.