front cover of Admiral Bill Halsey
Admiral Bill Halsey
A Naval Life
Thomas Alexander Hughes
Harvard University Press, 2016

William Halsey was the most famous naval officer of World War II. His fearlessness in carrier raids against Japan, his steely resolve at Guadalcanal, and his impulsive blunder at the Battle of Leyte Gulf made him the “Patton of the Pacific” and solidified his reputation as a decisive, aggressive fighter prone to impetuous errors of judgment in the heat of battle. In this definitive biography, Thomas Hughes punctures the popular caricature of the “fighting admiral” to reveal the truth of Halsey’s personal and professional life as it was lived in times of war and peace.

Halsey, the son of a Navy officer whose alcoholism scuttled a promising career, committed himself wholeheartedly to naval life at an early age. An audacious and inspiring commander to his men, he met the operational challenges of the battle at sea against Japan with dramatically effective carrier strikes early in the war. Yet his greatest contribution to the Allied victory was as commander of the combined sea, air, and land forces in the South Pacific during the long slog up the Solomon Islands chain, one of the war’s most daunting battlegrounds. Halsey turned a bruising slugfest with the Japanese navy into a rout. Skillfully mediating the constant strategy disputes between the Army and the Navy—as well as the clashes of ego between General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz—Halsey was the linchpin of America’s Pacific war effort when its outcome was far from certain.

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America's Sailors in the Great War
Seas, Skies, and Submarines
Lisle A. Rose
University of Missouri Press, 2017

Honorable Mention, 2016 Lyman Awards, presented by the North American Society for Oceanic History

This book is a thrillingly-written story of naval planes, boats, and submarines during World War I.

When the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, America’s sailors were immediately forced to engage in the utterly new realm of anti-submarine warfare waged on, below and above the seas by a variety of small ships and the new technology of airpower. The U.S. Navy substantially contributed to the safe trans-Atlantic passage of a two million man Army that decisively turned the tide of battle on the Western Front even as its battleship division helped the Royal Navy dominate the North Sea. Thoroughly professionalized, the Navy of 1917–18 laid the foundations for victory at sea twenty-five years later.

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Antisubmarine Warrior in the Pacific
Six Subs Sunk in Twelve Days
John A. Williamson
University of Alabama Press, 2005

A first-hand account of the USS England's accomplishments, written by its commanding officer

The USS England was a 1200-ton, 306-foot, long-hull destroyer escort. Commissioned into service in late 1943 and dispatched to the Pacific the following February, the England and its crew, in one 12-day period in 1944, sank more submarines than any other ship in U.S. naval history: of the six targets attacked, all six were destroyed. For this distinction, legendary in the annals of antisubmarine warfare, the ship and her crew were honored with the Presidential Unit Citation.
 
After convoying in the Atlantic, John A. Williamson was assigned to the England—first as its executive officer, then as its commanding officer—from the time of her commissioning until she was dry-docked for battle damage repairs in the Philadelphia Naval Yard fifteen months later. Besides being a key participant in the remarkable antisubmarine actions, Williamson commanded the England in the battle of Okinawa, where she was attacked by kamikaze planes.
 
Williamson narrates his memoir with authority and authenticity, describes naval tactics and weaponry precisely, and provides information gleaned from translations of the orders from the Japanese high command to Submarine Squadron 7. The author details the challenges of communal life aboard ship and explains the intense loyalty that bonds crew members for life. Ultimately, Williamson offers a compelling portrait of himself, an inexperienced naval officer who, having come of age in Alabama during the Depression, rose to become the most successful World War II antisubmarine warfare officer in the Pacific.
*

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The Atomic Archipelago
US Nuclear Submarines and Technopolitics of Risk in Cold War Italy
Davide Orsini
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022

Finalist, 2023 Turku Book Award
In 1972, the US Navy installed a base for nuclear submarines in the Archipelago of La Maddalena off the northeastern shore of Sardinia, Italy. In response, Italy established a radiation surveillance program to monitor the impact of the base on the environment and public health. In the first systematic study of nuclear expertise in Italy, Davide Orsini focuses on the ensuing technopolitical disputes concerning the role and safety of US nuclear submarines in the Mediterranean Sea from the Cold War period to the closure of the naval base in 2008. His book follows the struggles of different groups—including local residents of the archipelago, US Navy personnel, local administrators, Italian experts, and politicians—to define nuclear submarines as either imperceptible threats, much like radiocontamination, or efficient machines at the service of liberty and freedom.

Unlike inland nuclear power plants, vividly present and visible with their tall cooling towers and reactor containers, the mobility and invisibility of submarines contributed to an ambivalence about their nature, perpetuating the idea of nuclear exceptionalism. In Italy, they symbolized objects in constant motion, easily removable at the first sign of potential harm. Orsini demonstrates how these mobile sources of hazard posed special challenges for both expert assessments and public understandings of risk, and in contexts outside the Anglo-Saxon world, where unique social power dynamics held sway over the outcome of technopolitical controversies.

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Data Flood
Helping the Navy Address the Rising Tide of Sensor Information
Isaac R. III Porche
RAND Corporation, 2014
Navy analysts are struggling to keep pace with the growing flood of data collected by intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sensors. This challenge is sure to intensify as the Navy continues to field new and additional sensors. The authors explore options for solving the Navy’s “big data” challenge, considering changes across four dimensions: people, tools and technology, data and data architectures, and demand and demand management.
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Emergency Deep
Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander
Alfred Scott McLaren
University of Alabama Press, 2021
Conveys in dramatic detail the high-risk, covert operations of a nuclear attack submarine during the zenith of the Cold War

Captain Alfred Scott McLaren served as commander of the USS Queenfish (SSN 651) from September 1969 to May 1973, the very height of the Cold War. As commander, McLaren led at least six major clandestine operations, including the first-ever exploration of the entire Siberian Continental Shelf: a perilous voyage detailed in his previous book Unknown Waters.

Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander conveys the entire spectrum of Captain McLaren’s experiences commanding the USS Queenfish, mainly in the waters of the Russian Far East and also off Vietnam. McLaren offers a riveting and deeply human story that illuminates the intensity and pressures of commanding a nuclear attack submarine in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

Relying on his own notes and records, as well as discussions with former officers and shipmates, McLaren focuses on operational matters both great and small. He recounts his unique perspectives on attack-submarine tactics and exploratory techniques in high-risk or uncharted areas, matters of leadership and team-building and the morale of his crews, and the innumerable and often unforeseen ways his philosophy of command played out on a day-to-day basis, with consequences that ran the gamut from the mundane to the dire and life-threatening.

Readers are also treated to significant new information and insight on submarine strategy, maneuvers, and culture. Such details illuminate and bring to life, with both great humor and gravitas, the intensity and pressures on those engaged in covert missions on nuclear attack submarines.
 
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From Torpedoes to Aviation
Washington Irving Chambers & Technological Innovation in the New Navy 1876 to 1913
Stephen K. Stein
University of Alabama Press, 2007

The central figure in the modernization of the U.S. Navy.

The career of Washington Irving Chambers spans a formative period in the development of the United States Navy: He entered the Naval Academy in the doldrum years of obsolete, often rotting ships, and left after he had helped like-minded officers convince Congress and the public of the need to adopt a new naval strategy built around a fleet of technologically advanced battleships. He also laid the groundwork for naval aviation and the important role it would play in the modern navy.

This work covers Chambers’s early naval career, his work at the new Office of Naval Intelligence, his participation in the Greeley Relief Expedition, and a survey for the projected isthmian canal through Nicaragua, before becoming the key advocate for naval modernization. As such, Chambers worked as a pioneering torpedo designer, supervised construction of the Maine, modernized the New York Navy Yard, and became a member of the first permanent faculty at the Naval War College.

During his long career, Chambers not only designed torpedoes, but also several warships, including a prototype Dreadnought-style battleship and a host of small devices that ranged from torpedo guidance systems to the first catapult for launching airplanes from ships. At the close of his career, Chambers purchased the navy’s first aircraft and founded its air arm. Working with Glenn Curtiss, Chambers guided a coalition of aviation enthusiasts and pioneers who popularized naval aviation and demonstrated its capabilities. Chambers arranged the first take-off and landing of an airplane from a ship and other demonstrations of naval aviation. Combined with his tireless advocacy for modernization, these contributions secured a place in naval and aviation history for the innovator.

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Hard Aground
The Wreck of the USS Tennessee and the Rise of the US Navy
Andrew C. A. Jampoler
University of Alabama Press, 2023

Three intertwined stories that reveal the challenges faced by the US Navy in its evolution between the Civil War and the First World War

Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution from the end of Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy would modernize itself throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy infrastructure after the Civil War. This reconstruction began with barely enough time for the navy’s campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and for its role in the First World War. Jampoler argues that the federal government discovered that the fleet requested by the navy, and paid for by Congress, was the wrong fleet. Focus was on battleships and cruisers rather than destroyers and other small combat vessels needed to hunt submarines and serve as convoy escorts.

The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron that was a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of the First World War, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little-known missions and the ship's shocking destruction in a storm surge in the Caribbean serve as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of the principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise, including two of Tennessee’s commanding officers: Vice Admiral Sims, who commanded the US Navy squadrons deployed to Europe in support of the Royal Navy; Rear Admiral William Caperton, who commanded the Caribbean squadron before the Memphis (formerly the Tennessee) was lost; Charles Pond, squadron commander during the wreck; and the American ambassador to the Ottoman court, President Wilson’s enthusiastic supporter, Henry Morgenthau.

Jampoler rounds out this fascinating account with the story of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of the First World War and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war, as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.

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Hero of the Angry Sky
The World War I Diary and Letters of David S. Ingalls, America’s First Naval Ace
David S. Ingalls
Ohio University Press, 2012

Hero of the Angry Sky draws on the unpublished diaries, correspondence, informal memoir, and other personal documents of the U.S. Navy’s only flying “ace” of World War I to tell his unique story. David S. Ingalls was a prolific writer, and virtually all of his World War I aviation career is covered, from the teenager’s early, informal training in Palm Beach, Florida, to his exhilarating and terrifying missions over the Western Front. This edited collection of Ingalls’s writing details the career of the U.S. Navy’s most successful combat flyer from that conflict.

While Ingalls’s wartime experiences are compelling at a personal level, they also illuminate the larger, but still relatively unexplored, realm of early U.S. naval aviation. Ingalls’s engaging correspondence offers a rare personal view of the evolution of naval aviation during the war, both at home and abroad. There are no published biographies of navy combat flyers from this period, and just a handful of diaries and letters in print, the last appearing more than twenty years ago. Ingalls’s extensive letters and diaries add significantly to historians’ store of available material.

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Horrors of Slavery
Or, The American Tars in Tripoli
Blum, Hester
Rutgers University Press, 2008
Barbary pirates in Africa targeted sailors for centuries, often taking slaves and demanding ransom in exchange. First published in 1808, Horrors of Slavery is the tale of one such sailor, captured during the United States's first military encounter with the Islamic world, the Tripolitan War. William Ray, along with three hundred crewmates, spent nineteen months in captivity after his ship, the Philadelphia, ran aground in the harbor of Tripoli. Imprisoned, Ray witnessed-and chronicled-many of the key moments of the military engagement. In addition to offering a compelling history of a little-known war, this book presents the valuable perspective of an ordinary seaman who was as concerned with the injustices of the U.S. Navy as he was with Barbary pirates.

Hester Blum's introduction situates Horrors of Slavery in its literary, historical, and political contexts, bringing to light a crucial episode in the early history of our country's relations with Islamic states.

A volume in the Subterranean Lives series, edited by Bradford Verter

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I Am Fighting for the Union
The Civil War Letters of Naval Officer Henry Willis Wells
Henry Willis Wells, edited and introduced by Robert M. Browning Jr.
University of Alabama Press, 2023
An insightful, detailed, and invaluable account of daily life in the Union Navy
 
On May 18, 1862, Henry Willis Wells wrote a letter to his mother telling her in clear terms, “I am fighting for the Union.” Since August 1861, when he joined the US Navy as a master’s mate he never wavered in his loyalty. He wrote to his family frequently that he considered military service a necessary and patriotic duty, and the career that ensued was a dramatic one, astutely and articulately documented by Wells in more than 200 letters home, leaving an invaluable account of daily life in the Union Navy.

Wells joined the navy shortly after the war began, initially on board the Cambridge, attached to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which patrolled the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. He witnessed the Battle of Hampton Roads and the fight between the ironclads CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor. Next, the Cambridge assisted in the blockade of Wilmington, North Carolina. In one instance, the warship chased the schooner J. W. Pindar ashore during her attempt to run the blockade, and Confederate forces captured Henry’s boarding party. After a short prison stay in the infamous Libby Prison in Richmond, his Confederate captors paroled Henry. He travelled back to Brookline, and soon thereafter the Navy Department assigned him to the gunboat Ceres, which operated on the sounds and rivers of North Carolina, protecting army positions ashore. Henry was on board during the Confederate attempt to capture Washington, North Carolina. During this April 1863 attack, Henry was instrumental in the town’s defense, commanding a naval battery ashore during the latter part of the fight.

His exceptional service gained him a transfer to a larger warship, the USS Montgomery, again on the blockade of Wilmington. Later the service assigned him to the Gem of the Sea, part of the East Gulf Blockading Squadron. Through his hard work and professionalism, he finally earned his first command. In September 1864, he became the commanding officer of the Rosalie, a sloop used as a tender to the local warships. Later he commanded the schooner Annie, also a tender. At the end of December 1864, however, the Annie suffered a massive explosion, killing all hands, including Wells. He was twenty-three years old when his life and career ended tragically. Wells’s letters document both his considerable achievements and his frustrations. His challenges, triumphs, and disappointments are rendered with candor. I Am Fighting for the Union is a vital and deeply personal account of a momentous chapter in the history of the Civil War and its navies.
 
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John Barry
An American Hero in the Age of Sail
Timothy McGrath
Westholme Publishing, 2010

The Life of the First Captain of the United States Navy

Finalist for the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Excellence in Naval Literature

“Ashore as well as at sea, Tim McGrath paints an informative, engaging and highly entertaining portrait of this worthy but neglected hero of American independence. The author shows us a man who was a magnificent embodiment of common sense—and uncommon courage and dedication. That such a work is long overdue makes its achievement all the more pleasurable.”—Wall Street Journal 

“Combining sophisticated use of sources with a pleasing writing style, McGrath masterfully rescues a father of the U.S. Navy from unmerited eclipse.”—Publishers Weekly

“A nearly indispensable addition to U.S. Navy collections.”—Booklist

“McGrath employs exemplary narrative style in this work. . . . In John Barry, the author adroitly juxtaposes maritime history, narratives of naval combat, and early U.S. social history.”—New England Quarterly

“McGrath is a compelling and lucid writer. He brings Barry to life, makes battles understandable, and provides the clearest description of Barry's 1778 capture of the British transport ships Mermaid and Kitty that this reviewer has seen.”Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

“A great read and an absorbing account of a drama-filled life.”—Naval History

“Well researched, well written, and a pleasure to read, this book restores John Barry to the important place he once held as one of our nation’s great heroes. It is a tale of high adventure and personal courage and you will not want to put it down.” JAMES L. NELSON, author of George Washington’s Secret Navy

“Readers of this vivid biography will imagine they smell the ocean’s salt air and the sulfurous fumes of gunpowder as they navigate these action-packed pages. Fans of Horatio Hornblower and Lucky Jack Aubrey will rejoice in discovering their real-life American counterpart.”GREGORY J. URWIN, author of Facing Fearful Odds: The Siege of Wake Island

The man regarded as “the Father of the American Navy” returns to the quarterdeck in John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail, the first comprehensive biography of this legendary officer in generations. Son of a hardscrabble Irish farmer from County Wexford, Barry was sent to sea as a child, arriving in Philadelphia during the restless decade before the American Revolution. Brave and ambitious, he ascended the ratlines to become a successful merchant captain at a young age, commanding the most prestigious ship in the colonies and recording the fastest known day of sail in the century.

Volunteering to fight for the Continental cause, Barry saw his star rise during the War for Independence. As captain of the Lexington, Raleigh, and Alliance, Barry faced down broadsides, mutinies, and even a fleet of icebergs. He captured the first enemy warship taken by a Continental vessel and fought the last battle of the American Revolution. His hard-won victory over two British warships simultaneously garnered him international notoriety, while his skill as a seafarer and cool temper established Barry as a worthy foe among British captains. Without a ship during the winter of 1776-77, the ever resourceful Barry lead a battery of naval artillery at the battle of Princeton. With peace came a historic voyage to China, where Barry helped open trade with that reclusive empire. In 1794, President Washington named Barry as the first commissioned officer in the new United States Navy. Given the title of commodore, Barry ended his career during America’s naval war with France, teaching the ropes to a new generation of officers, most notably Stephen Decatur.

Drawn from primary source documents from around the world, John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail by Tim McGrath brings the story of this self-made American back to life in a major new biography.

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Lincoln's Trident
The West Gulf Blockading Squadron during the Civil War
Robert M. Browning Jr.
University of Alabama Press, 2014
In Lincoln’s Trident, Coast Guard historian Robert M. Browning Jr. continues his magisterial series about the Union’s naval blockade of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Established by the Navy Department in 1862, the West Gulf Blockading Squadron operated from St. Andrews Bay (Panama City), Florida to the Rio Grande River. As with the Navy’s blockade squadrons operating in the Atlantic, the mission of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron was to cripple the South’s economy by halting imports and disrupting cotton exports, the South’s main source of hard currency. The blockade also limited transportation within the South and participated in combined operations with Union land forces.
 
The history of the squadron comprises myriad parts and players, deployed in a variety of missions across the thousand-mile-wide Western Theater. From disorganized beginnings, the squadron’s leaders and sailors had to overcome setbacks, unfulfilled expectations, and lost opportunities. Browning masterfully captures the many variables that influenced the strategic choices of Navy commanders as they both doggedly pursued unchanging long-term goals as well as improvised and reacted to short-term opportunities.
 
Notable among its leaders was David Glasgow Farragut, believed by many to be America’s greatest naval hero, who led the squadron through most of the war and the climactic Battle of Mobile Bay. Under his legendary leadership, the squadron not only sealed Confederate sea ports, but also made feints and thrusts up the Mississippi River as far north as Vicksburg, Mississippi.
 
Knowing the Navy’s role in isolating the Confederate economy and preventing the movement of troops and supplies within the South is crucial to understanding of the outcomes of the Civil War, as well as the importance of naval power in military conflicts. With thirty-five maps and illustrations, Lincoln’s Trident expounds upon an essential part of the Civil War as well as naval and American history.
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Lured by the American Dream
Filipino Servants in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, 1952-1970
P. James Paligutan
University of Illinois Press, 2022
Starting in 1952, the United States Navy and Coast Guard actively recruited Filipino men to serve as stewards--domestic servants for officers. Oral histories and detailed archival research inform P. James Paligutan's story of the critical role played by Filipino sailors in putting an end to race-based military policies. Constrained by systemic exploitation, Filipino stewards responded with direct complaints to flag officers and chaplains, rating transfer requests that flooded the bureaucracy, and refusals to work. Their actions had a decisive impact on seagoing military’s elimination of the antiquated steward position. Paligutan looks at these Filipino sailors as agents of change while examining the military system through the lens of white supremacy, racist perceptions of Asian males, and the motives of Filipinos who joined the armed forces of the power that had colonized their nation.

Insightful and dramatic, Lured by the American Dream is the untold story of how Filipino servicepersons overcame tradition and hierarchy in their quest for dignity.

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The Master Of Monterey
A Novel
Lawrence Coates
University of Nevada Press, 2003
This comic novel, by the author of The Blossom Festival, is set in Mexican California in 1842 and is based on a true story of mistaken conquest. When Commodore Jones and the crew of the National Intention land in Monterey believing themselves to be bringing freedom and democracy to the benighted Californios, they discover that history has preceded them, that cruelty, betrayal, greed, and lust are already well established there, and that far from existing outside of history, California is a battleground for several contending versions of the past. They also find that their own limitations and illusions are far more powerful than the message of hope that they intend to deliver. 
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Military Power and Popular Protest
The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico
McCaffrey, Katherine T
Rutgers University Press, 2002

Residents of Vieques, a small island just off the east coast of Puerto Rico, live wedged between an ammunition depot and live bombing range for the U.S. Navy. Since the 1940s when the navy expropriated over two-thirds of the island, residents have struggled to make a life amid the thundering of bombs and rumbling of weaponry fire. Like the armys base in Okinawa, Japan, the facility has drawn vociferous protests from residents who challenged U.S. security interests overseas. In 1999, when a local civilian employee of the base was killed by a stray bomb, Vieques again erupted in protests that have mobilized tens of thousands individuals and transformed this tiny Caribbean Island into the setting for an international cause célèbre.

Katherine T. McCaffrey gives a complete analysis of the troubled relationship between the U.S. Navy and island residents. She explores such topics as the history of U.S. naval involvement in Vieques; a grassroots mobilizationled by fishermenthat began in the 1970s; how the navy promised to improve the lives of the island residentsand failed; and the present-day emergence of a revitalized political activism that has effectively challenged naval hegemony.

The case of Vieques brings to the fore a major concern within U.S. foreign policy that extends well beyond Puerto Rico: military bases overseas act as lightning rods for anti-American sentiment, thus threatening this countrys image and interests abroad. By analyzing this particular, conflicted relationship, the book also explores important lessons about colonialism and postcolonialism and the relationship of the United States to the countries in which it maintains military bases.

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The Naval Air War in Korea
Richard P. Hallion
University of Alabama Press, 2011

“In The Naval Air War in Korea, Dr. Hallion has captured the fact, feel- ing, and fancy of a very important conflict in aviation history, in- cluding the highly significant facets of the transition from piston to jet-propelled combat aircraft.”—Norman Polmar, author of Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 18th Edition

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Navy Priest
Richard Gribble
Catholic University of America Press, 2015
Navy Priest is a compelling biography of the Jesuit priest and Navy chaplain John Francis (Jake) Laboon. Father Jake made a significant contribution to the United States Navy, both as a World War II submarine officer and, most prominently, during a 22-year career as a chaplain. Laboon served as the first chaplain for the Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine Program, but also served as chaplain at his alma mater the United States Naval Academy, undertook a tour of duty with the US Marines in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Legion of Merit, and later served as Fleet Chaplain of the United States Atlantic Fleet.
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ON BOARD THE USS MASON
THE WORLD WAR II DIARY OF JAMES A. DUNN
MANSEL G. BLACKFORD
The Ohio State University Press, 2016
James A. Dunn was a signalman on the USS Mason, a destroyer escort during World War II, the only oceangoing warship in the navy to employ African Americans in positions other than cook or messmate. Manned by African American seamen (and commanded by white officers), the ship made ten crossings of the Atlantic from 1944 to 1945, escorting convoys of merchant ships to and from the United Kingdom and North Africa and operating in hunter-killer groups searching for German submarines.
Dunn kept a day-to-day diary during his spare time on board the Mason. Such diaries are a rarity, for the navy (and other armed services) forbade the keeping of diaries, fearful lest secret information fall into enemy hands. The diary chronicles the Mason’s wartime activities, from the first convoy to the final return to the United States. It captures the feeling and meaning of life on board with an immediacy not fully found in retrospective accounts. The diary accurately records the mortal danger Dunn and his shipmates were in while attacking enemy submarines or dealing with extreme weather conditions in the North Atlantic. It conveys the boredom the men encountered while confined on long, tedious convoys and the joy of shore leaves. Here is the daily life aboard ship—the duties and the pastimes that made shipboard life endurable.
Equally interesting, the diary reveals what it meant to be an African American in a white navy within a segregated American society, the shipboard tensions, and the shipboard cooperation and sense of unity. It also portrays the life of an African American onshore in the United States, Great Britain, and North Africa and the love story that unfolded between James and his wife, Jane.
Supplemented by additional sources, including interviews with Dunn, this diary is a personal view into an important part of American history. Like the Tuskegee airmen, the men of the USS Mason paved the way for desegregation in America’s armed forces, contributing to a civil rights movement that changed the face of a nation.
 
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On Wide Seas
The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era
Claude Berube
University of Alabama Press, 2022
A meticulously researched account of how the US Navy evolved between the War of 1812 and the Civil War
 
The 1830s is an overlooked period in American naval history and is usually overshadowed by the more dramatic War of 1812 and the Civil War. Nevertheless, the personnel, operations, technologies, policies, and vision of the Navy of that era, which was emerging from the “Age of Sail,” are important components of its evolution, setting it on the long path to its status as a global maritime power. On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era details the ways in which the US Navy transformed from an antiquated arm of the nation’s military infrastructure into a more dynamic and effective force that was soon to play a pivotal role in a number of national and international conflicts.
 
By Andrew Jackson’s inauguration in 1829, the Navy had engaged with two major powers, defended American shipping, conducted antipiracy operations, and provided a substantive, long-term overseas presence. The Navy began to transform during Jackson’s administration due in part to the policies of the administration and to the emerging officer corps, which sought to professionalize its own ranks, modernize the platforms on which it sailed, and define its own role within national affairs and in the broader global maritime commons. Jackson had built his reputation as a soldier, but he quickly recognized as president the necessity for a navy that could foster his policies. To expand American commerce, he needed a navy that could defend shipping as well as conduct punitive raids or deterrence missions.
 
Jackson developed a clear, concise naval strategy that policymakers and officers alike could seize and execute. He also provided a vision for the Navy, interceded to resolve naval disciplinary challenges, and directed naval operations. Also, given Jackson’s own politics, junior officers were emboldened by the populist era to challenge traditional, conservative thinking. They carried out a collective vision that coincided with the national literary movement that recognized America’s future would rely upon the Navy.
 
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Sailor Of The Air
The 1917-1919 Letters and Diary of USN CMM/A Irving Edward Sheely
Lawrence D. Sheely
University of Alabama Press, 1993

In the winter of 1917, with most of the world at war, twenty-three-year-old Irving Edward Sheely of Albany, New York, enlisted in Naval Aviation and began his training at Pensacola Naval Air Station. When Congress declared ware on Germany on April 6, 1917, the combined strength of aviation within the Navy and Marine Corps was 48 officers, 239 enlisted men, 54 airplanes, one airship, and one air station.

Lieutenant Kenneth Whiting immediately recruited seven volunteer officers and 122 volunteer enlisted men with orders to go directly to France as the First Aeronautical Detachment. By June, the first organized contingent of American forces arrived in the combat zone at St. Nazaire, France—woefully unprepared to take on the mighty submarine force of Imperial Germany. Among this small detachment was Landsman Machinist Mate Second Class Irving E. Sheely.
Trained by American and foreign officers, using both American and foreign aircraft, Sheely learned aviation and aviation combat at the heart of the action. He served as Observer/Gunlayer with Navy Lieutenant Kenneth MacLeish as pilot, and the two participated in some of the first antisubmarine air patrols in history, including a sea landing to rescue a downed crew. While at Clermont-Ferrand, Sheely developed an improved bombsight, for which he was praised by MacLeish. Following the Armistice, Sheely participated in the closing of the Navy base at Eastleigh, England, and returned to the United States in November 1918.
Utilizing Sheely’s correspondence and meticulous diary spanning 19 months of training and service—mostly on foreign soil and in foreign aircraft—this book presents an unusual first person account of the wartime experience of naval aviation in World War I. Sheely’s letters and diary describe the many deprivations and inadequacies of the aviation program and show clearly the sacrifices made by the officers and enlisted men. He supplied for himself items, such as helmet and goggles, that later servicemen would expect the military to issue. In addition to wartime description, the letters reveal the young man’s concern for his family and his interest in home, so a very human story emerges.
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Standing Watch
American Submarine Veterans Remember the Cold War Era
Jonathan Li-Chung Leung
University of Alabama Press, 2019
The first book to capture and preserve the inside story of the exclusive brotherhood that manned the front lines of the Cold War
 
Featuring interviews from seventeen veteran submariners, Standing Watch: American Submarine Veterans Remember the Cold War Era offers the perspective of the submariners themselves—lending them a voice and paying homage to their service. Jonathan Li-Chung Leung provides an original glimpse into a world of unique challenges and characters, a life isolated and submerged, and a duty defined by the juxtaposition of monotonous routine and unparalleled excitement.
 
These personal accounts of life below the surface offer readers a front-row seat to close encounters with Soviet submarines and the naval blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as an intimate understanding of daily life onboard the vessels, the culture of military discipline, and the religious-like fervor exercised in honoring traditions big and small. By applying first-hand perspectives to a larger thematic overview, this book uses authentic narratives to deliver a lively and colorful picture of the Silent Service.
 
Set against the backdrop of sobering geo-political disputes and their own role as the nation’s defenders against a seemingly ambiguous super-enemy, these veterans focus on their responsibilities and reflect on careers built on the simple axioms of pride and service. This invigorating and unalloyed account is an unprecedented addition to the existing literature on naval and military history.
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front cover of To My Dearest Wife, Lide
To My Dearest Wife, Lide
Letters from George B. Gideon Jr. during Commodore Perry’s Expedition to Japan, 1853–1855
Edited by M. Patrick Sauer and David A. Ranzan
University of Alabama Press, 2019
A personal account of Commodore Perry’s landmark expedition to Japan and life in the antebellum navy
 
George B. Gideon Jr. served as second assistant engineer aboard the  USS Powhatan from 1852 to 1856. From his position on the steam  frigate, Gideon traveled to Singapore, Labuan, Borneo, Hong Kong, and many other Asian lands. During his time at sea, Gideon penned dozens of letters to his wife, Lide, back home in Philadelphia. Recently  discovered in the attic of his great-great-grandniece, were fifty-one letters penned by Gideon providing thorough and insightful commentary  throughout the voyage.

Through these correspondences, Gideon laboriously documents the details of his daily life on board, from the food they ate to the technical aspects of his work, as well as observations concerning the historical events unfolding around him, such as Chinese piracy, the Taiping Rebellion, the Crimean War, and the devastation of Shimoda.  To My Dearest Wife, Lide: Letters from George B. Gideon Jr. during  Commodore Perry’s Expedition to Japan, 1853–1855 is a rare first-person account of the landmark American naval expedition to Japan to establish commercial relations between the two countries. Gideon’s letters have been meticulously transcribed and annotated by the editors and are an invaluable primary historical source.

Gideon’s letters are candid and revealing, delving into the rampant dysfunction in the navy of the 1850s—sickness and disease, alcohol abuse, and poor leadership, among other challenges. Gideon also unabashedly shares his own cynical views of the navy’s role in supporting American economic interests in Japan. This firsthand account of the political mission of the Perry expedition is a unique contribution to naval and military history and gives readers a better view of life aboard a navy ship.
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front cover of Torpedo
Torpedo
Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain
Katherine C. Epstein
Harvard University Press, 2014

When President Eisenhower referred to the “military–industrial complex” in his 1961 Farewell Address, he summed up in a phrase the merger of government and industry that dominated the Cold War United States. In this bold reappraisal, Katherine Epstein uncovers the origins of the military–industrial complex in the decades preceding World War I, as the United States and Great Britain struggled to perfect a crucial new weapon: the self-propelled torpedo.

Torpedoes epitomized the intersection of geopolitics, globalization, and industrialization at the turn of the twentieth century. They threatened to revolutionize naval warfare by upending the delicate balance among the world’s naval powers. They were bought and sold in a global marketplace, and they were cutting-edge industrial technologies. Building them, however, required substantial capital investments and close collaboration among scientists, engineers, businessmen, and naval officers. To address these formidable challenges, the U.S. and British navies created a new procurement paradigm: instead of buying finished armaments from the private sector or developing them from scratch at public expense, they began to invest in private-sector research and development. The inventions emerging from torpedo R&D sparked legal battles over intellectual property rights that reshaped national security law.

Blending military, legal, and business history with the history of science and technology, Torpedo recasts the role of naval power in the run-up to World War I and exposes how national security can clash with property rights in the modern era.

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front cover of Wings of Gold
Wings of Gold
An Account of Naval Aviation Training in World War II, The Correspondence of Aviation Cadet/Ensign Robert R. Rea
Wesley Phillips Newton
University of Alabama Press, 1987
Wings of Gold makes a unique contribution to the history of naval aviation. The book sets out the day-to-day experiences and reactions of a cadet who went through the aviation training program at its peak during World War II. An emphasis on training is missing in almost all books dealing with that conflict; in this book, it is the focus. In contrast with official histories, this is an account of how training did occur, rather than how it was intended to occur. It chronicles failures as well as successes, frustrations and achievements. Beginning with a comprehensive introduction to the history of naval aviation training, the authors recount the personal experiences of an individual cadet preparing for war, based on wartime letters written by cadet Rea to his family. The letters are open and candid, and they provide an insider’s look at the conditions and nature of the Naval Aviation Training Program in the 1940s.
 
Millions of Americans underwent military training during World War II, and contemporary historians and readers have begun to recognize the significance and value of primary sources related not only to combat but also to training and preparedness.
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