Thomas served in both the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters, and in some of the most important World War II battles.While on the RANGER, he participated in OPERATION LEADER, the most significant attack on Northern Europe by a US carrier during the war. During LEADER, while attacking a freight barge carrying 40 tons of ammunition, Thomas' plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Surprisingly, in spite of the considerable engine damage, the plane made it back to the RANGER, where Thomas crash-landed. That landing was his 13th official carrier landing.In the Pacific, Thomas participated in the numerous actions against Japanese targets in the Philippines, including strikes on Ormoc Bay, Cavite, Manilla, Santa Cruz, San Fernando, Lingayen, Mindoro, Clark Field and Aparri.Following these actions, Thomas' squadron made strikes on Formosa, French Indo-China, Saigon, Pescadores, Hainan, Amami O Shima, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Japan. The attack on Japan was the first attack on Japan from an aircraft carrier since the "Doolittle Raid."While on the ESSEX, just after Thomas had returned from a strike on Santa Cruz, the ship was hit by a Kamikaze piloted by Yoshinori Yamaguchi, Yoshino Special Attack Corps. Yamaguchi was flying a Yokosuba D4Y3 dive bomber. The Kamikaze attack killed 16 crewman and wounded 44.Returning from a strike on Hainan, off the Chinese coast, Thomas' plane ran out of fuel. After a harrowing water landing, Thomas and squadron photographer Montague succeeded in inflating and launching one rubber boat and his crewman Gress another. After a long day in pre-Typhoon weather with 40 foot swells, the three were rescued by the USS SULLIVANS.In recounting the events in this book, Thomas draws upon his daily journal, his letters home, and extensive interviews and research conducted over 40 years with fellow pilots and crewman. The book cites 20 interviews and 5 combat journals, and contains 209 photos documenting the ships, planes, men, and combat actions of Torpedo Squadron 4. Many of the photographs were collected by Thomas during the war and include gun photo shots, recon photos, and, remarkably, a picture of the tail of Thomas' Torpedo plane as it sinks in the China Sea following his water crash landing.

    Cullen is a retired business executive and veteran of The Battle of The Bulge. During the second world war, as an army staff sergeant, he trained infantrymen for battle, then volunteered to go to Europe and enter the trenches himself. He was awarded four battle stars—Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, and Germany, Bronze Star, Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, Combat Infantry Badge, and the Belgian fourragère of 1940. Once the war ended, he returned to life as a civilian. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University on the GI Bill. Mr. Cullen has been married to the love of his life for over fifty years. He has two children, and five grandchildren. He is active in veterans' groups, including the Battle of the Bulge Group, and has participated in a reenactment of the Battle of The Bulge with a group of WWII re-enactors in Washington state. James K. Cullen is 95 years old. Band Of Strangers is his first book.

    Herbert A. Werner, one of the few surviving German U-boat commanders, served on five submarines from 1941 to 1945. From the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, from the English Channel to the North Sea, he takes the reader with him through the triumphant years of 1941 and 1942, when German U-boats nearly strangled England, to the apocalyptic final years of destruction, disillusionment, and defeat.

    Interweaving the stories of survivors, Doug Stanton has brought this astonishing human drama to life in a narrative that is at once immediate and timeless. The definitive account of a little-known chapter in World War II history, In Harm's Way is destined to become a classic tale of war, survival, and extraordinary courage.On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine. An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the Pacific Ocean, where they remained undetected by the navy for nearly four days and nights. Battered by a savage sea, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off sharks, hypothermia, and dementia. The captain's subsequent court-martial left many questions unanswered: How did the navy fail to realize the Indianapolis was missing? And perhaps most amazing of all, how did these 317 men manage to survive?

    Chosen as a Main Selection of the Military Book Club.

    In 'Bomber Boys' Kevin Wilson presents an account of the everyday heroism of British bomber crews in 1943 - the year when Bomber Command believed it could win WWII by bombing alone.

    First published in hardcover on the battle's fiftieth anniversary in 1994 and drawing on materials not previously available, it blends history with human drama to give a real sense of what happened--despite the mammoth scope of the battle. Every facet of naval warfare was involved in the struggle that engaged some two hundred thousand men and 282 American, Japanese, and Australian ships over more than a hundred thousand square miles of sea. That Tom Cutler succeeded at such a difficult task is no surprise. The award-winning author saw combat service aboard many types of ships during his naval career, and as a historian and professor of strategy and policy at the Naval War College, he has studied the battle for many years. Cutler captures the milieu, analyzes the strategy and tactics employed, and re-creates the experiences of the participants--from seaman to admiral, both Japanese and American. It is a story replete with awe-inspiring heroism, failed intelligence, flawed strategy, brilliant deception, great controversies, and a cast of characters with names like Halsey, Nimitz, Ozawa, and MacArthur. Such an exciting and revealing account of the battle is unlikely to be equaled by future writers.

    Written from the perspective of General George C. Kenney, the man in charge, the book is a candid insider’s account of how America turned the tables on the Japanese in the Pacific through a combination of strategy, tactics, and superior air technology.An entertaining read, as well as an important historical document, Air War in the Pacific features a cast of larger-than-life personalities know to WW2 buffs, from brilliant tactician ‘Big Chief’ General Douglas MacArthur to eccentric hotshot pilot Paul ‘Pappy’ Gunn.

    Stoically poised for battle in the spring of 1945—when even Japan’s last desperate technique of arms, the kamikaze, was running short—Yamato arose as the last magnificent arrow in the imperial quiver of Emperor Hirohito. Here, Jan Morris not only tells the dramatic story of the magnificent ship itself—from secret wartime launch to futile sacrifice at Okinawa — but, more fundamentally, interprets the ship as an allegorical figure of war itself, in its splendor and its squalor, its heroism and its waste. Drawing on rich naval history and rhapsodic metaphors from international music and art, Battleship Yamato is a work of grand ironic elegy.

    Smith and his principal staff officers of the 2d Marine Division, Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commanding the Central Pacific Force, flew to New Zealand from Pearl Harbor. Spruance told the Marines to prepare for an amphibious assault against Japanese positions in the Gilbert Islands in November. The Marines knew about the Gilberts. The 2d Raider Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson had attacked Makin Atoll a year earlier. Subsequent intelligence reports warned that the Japanese had fortified Betio Island in Tarawa Atoll, where elite forces guarded a new bomber strip. Spruance said Betio would be the prime target for the 2d Marine Division. General Smith's operations officer, Lieutenant Colonel David M. Shoup, studied the primitive chart of Betio and saw that the tiny island was surrounded by a barrier reef. Shoup asked Spruance if any of the Navy's experimental, shallow-draft, plastic boats could be provided. "Not available," replied the admiral, "expect only the usual wooden landing craft." Shoup frowned. General Smith could sense that Shoup's gifted mind was already formulating a plan. The results of that plan were momentous. The Tarawa operation became a tactical watershed: the first, large-scale test of American amphibious doctrine against a strongly fortified beachhead. The Marine assault on Betio was particularly bloody. Ten days after the assault, Time magazine published the first of many post-battle analyses: Last week some 2,000 or 3,000 United States Marines, most of them now dead or wounded, gave the nation a name to stand beside those of Concord Bridge, the Bon Homme Richard, the Alamo, Little Big Horn and Belleau Wood. The name was "Tarawa."

    the first-hand story of Uncle Sam’s U-Boat killers.” — Chicago Daily News “The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. . . .” — Winston Churchill German U-Boats were causing havoc for the Allied fleets across the oceans of the world. The Battle of the Atlantic had been ongoing since the beginning of the war and the Royal Navy, United States Navy and Allied merchant shipping were taking heavy casualties against these underwater terrors. The U-505 had been launched on 25 May 1941. Over the next three years she went on to sink a total of eight ships. But the upper hand that once had been held by U-Boats was beginning to weaken and tide began to turn in favor of the Allied navies. Daniel Gallery, in his brilliant memoir, explains how he led Task Group 21.12 in the battle against the U-Boat threat. Commanding the USS Guadalcanal he led his crew to sink three of these menacing submarines, but his greatest achievement was to capture the U-505 off the coast of Africa. He was the first American officer to capture an enemy warship since the War of 1812, and this victory gave the United States Navy not only a great victory but also the codebooks, Enigma machine and other secret materials found on board critically assisted the Allied codebreakers. “Excellent in several ways: it provides a fine quick survey of the whole Atlantic war, it describes the operation of the German U-boat service, and, most dramatically, it tells how an American task force under Admiral Gallery achieved the unique feat of capturing a German submarine.” — Publishers’ Weekly “One of the best non-fiction books about World War II.” — Raleigh News & Observer “One of the war’s most exciting memoirs.” — Chicago News “A first-rate adventure tale...suspense and excitement told with a seaman’s salty zest...excellent reading.” — Chicago Sunday Tribune “A masterful job that merits the attention of every lover of sea stories.” — Pittsburgh Press “Brimming with thrills.” — Philadelphia News “An engrossing tale. . . . Pungent, entertaining, informative.” — Navy Times “A humdinger of a sea story ... a highly readable book, trimmed from stem to stern with the writer’s irrepressible sense of humor.” — Chicago Sunday Times Daniel V. Gallery was a rear admiral in the United States Navy. He saw extensive action during World War II, fighting U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. After the war, Gallery was a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea was originally published in 1956 and he passed away in 1977.

    

    Stevens reveals the incredible true story of the search for and discovery of the USS Grunion. Discovered in 2006 after a decades-long, high-risk search by the Abele brothers—whose father commanded the submarine and met his untimely death aboard it—one question remained: what sank the USS Grunion? Was it a round from a Japanese ship, a catastrophic mechanical failure, or something else—one of the sub’s own torpedoes? For almost half the war, submarine skippers’ complaints about the MK 14 torpedo’s dangerous flaws were ignored by naval brass, who sent the subs out with the defective weapon. Fatal Dive is the first book that documents the entire saga of the ship and its crew and provides compelling evidence that the Grunion was a victim of “The Great Torpedo Scandal of 1941-43.” Fatal Dive finally lays to rest one of World War II’s greatest mysteries.

    Miraculously, thirty-three crew members still survived. While their loved ones waited in unbearable tension on shore, their ultimate fate would depend upon one man, U.S. Navy officer Charles "Swede" Momsen -- an extraordinary combination of visionary, scientist, and man of action. In this thrilling true narrative, prize-winning author Peter Maas brings us in the vivid detail a moment-by-moment account of the disaster and the man at its center. Could he actually pluck those men from a watery grave? Or had all his pioneering work been in vain?

    If the German U-boats had prevailed, the maritime artery across the Atlantic would have been severed. Mass hunger would have consumed Britain, and the Allied armies would have been prevented from joining in the invasion of Europe. There would have been no D-Day. Through fascinating contemporary diaries and letters, from the leaders and from the sailors on all sides, Jonathan Dimbleby creates a thrilling narrative that uniquely places the campaign in the context of the entire Second World War. Challenging conventional wisdom on the use of intelligence and on Churchill's bombing campaign, The Battle of the Atlantic tells the epic story of the decisions that led to victory, and the horror and humanity of life on those perilous seas.