Book picks similar to
The Four Days' Battle of 1666: The Greatest Sea Fight of the Age of Sail by Frank L. Fox
history
naval
17th-century
nautical
The U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima
Raymond Henri - 1945
Sixty-thousand marines had landed on the barren, volcanic island that was five miles long and two and half miles wide. For five weeks these men would become involved in some of the bloodiest and fiercest fighting of the Second World War. One third of them would end the battle either dead or wounded. The U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima written by five official marine combat writers, who personally saw action on the island, provides vivid insight into the battle that was described as “a nightmare in hell.” Henri and his fellow correspondents provide a step-by-step chronological overview of the battle as it was fought. They begin with an outline of the months of preparation that were undertaken before the first gun was fired before providing details on how the generals and admirals put their plans into action. Every aspect of the conflict is covered by the authors who interviewed many of the frontline troops to gain a sense of what the battle was like witnessed from the marines on the ground. “Among the Americans who served on Iwo, uncommon valor was a common virtue” — Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, U. S. Pacific Fleet. “The Japanese, despite heavy losses, offered maximum resistance, but the Marines were established on high ground and the conquest of Iwo Jima was assured.” — Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King. This book is essential reading for all who wish to understand what the U.S. Marines went through in their famous capture of Iwo Jima. The authors of this book are three Marine Corps combat correspondents and two Marine Public Relations Officers who were at Iwo Jima. Combat correspondents are trained like other Marines. They live and fight with the outfits to which they are attached and write articles for newspapers and magazines about the men in their units. In battle they can see only what happens in their own units’ limited sectors. In compiling this book, therefore, they drew upon their own experiences on Iwo plus stories written by other combat correspondents and Public Relations Officers who were there. The authors were Captain Raymond Henri, Public Relations Officer, 3d Marine Division, who passed away in 2015, First Lieutenant Jim G. Lucas, Assistant Public Relations Officer, 4th Marine Division, who passed away in 1971, Technical Sergeant W. Keyes Beech, Combat Correspondent, 5th Marine Division, who passed away in 1990, Technical Sergeant David K. Dempsey, Combat Correspondent, 4th Marine Division who passed away in 1999, and Technical Sergeant Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., Combat Correspondent, 3d Marine Division, who passed away in 2005. Their book was first published in 1945.
Siege of Yorktown: The Last Major Land Battle of the American Revolutionary War (Battle of Yorktown - Surrender at Yorktown - Siege of Little York)
Henry Freeman - 2017
Inside you will read about... ✓ The Road to Yorktown ✓ Opening Moves ✓ The Troops in Motion ✓ The Battle at Sea ✓ The Calm Before the Storm ✓ The Siege Commences ✓ The Fall When Washington moved against Cornwallis, the entire world held its breath. And when surrender was offered
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Caroline Alexander - 2003
More than two centuries have passed since Fletcher Christian mutinied against Lt. Bligh on a small armed transport vessel called Bounty. Why the details of this obscure adventure at the end of the world remain vivid and enthralling is as intriguing as the truth behind the legend. Caroline Alexander focusses on the court martial of the ten mutineers captured in Tahiti and brought to justice in Portsmouth. Each figure emerges as a richly drawn character caught up in a drama that may well end on the gallows. With enormous scholarship and exquisitely drawn characters, The Bounty is a tour de force.
B-58A Remembrances
Philip Rowe - 2012
Varied stories of what it was like to be a proud member of a flight crew aboard that amazing Mach 2 strategic bomber back in the 1960's.
A Sniper in the Arizona: 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines in the Arizona Territory, 1967
John J. Culbertson - 1999
The first was that we were still alive. . . ."In 1967, death was the constant companion of the Marines of Hotel Company, 2/5, as they patrolled the paddy dikes, mud, and mountains of the Arizona Territory southwest of Da Nang. But John Culbertson and most of the rest of Hotel Company were the same lean, fighting Marines who had survived the carnage of Operation Tuscaloosa. Hotel's grunts walked over the enemy, not around him. In graphic terms, John Culbertson describes the daily, dangerous life of a soldier fighting in a country where the enemy was frequently indistinguishable from the allies, fought tenaciously, and thought nothing of using civilians as a shield. Though he was one of the top marksmen in 1st Marine Division Sniper School in Da Nang in March 1967--a class of just eighteen, chosen from the division's twenty thousand Marines--Culbertson knew that against the VC and the NVA, good training and experience could carry you just so far. But his company's mission was to find and engage the enemy, whatever the price. This riveting, bloody first-person account offers a stark testimony to the stuff U.S. Marines are made of.
The Last Attack: Sixth SS Panzer Army and the defense of Hungary and Austria in 1945
William Alan Webb - 2016
Following defeat in the Ardennes Offensive, Adolf Hitler and the German leadership faced the question of how best to use what little offensive firepower remained to them, as represented by the Sixth SS Panzer Army. Hitler’s obsession with protecting the last source of natural oil available to the Reich compelled this decision, one made against the strong opposition of his military advisers. The resulting offensive, code-named Operation Spring Awakening, was a disaster for Nazi Germany, but a boon for postwar Europe. Heavily outnumbered and lacking supplies, especially fuel, the Sixth SS Panzer Army nevertheless delayed the Red Army long enough for American and British forces to occupy much of western and southern Austria. There is, therefore, a strong likelihood the presence in Austria of Sixth SS Panzer Army saved that country from being overrun completely by the Red Army, and possibly being included in the Warsaw Pact as a Soviet satellite. Impeccably footnoted for peer review, the author hopes this will wet the reader's appetite for more detailed histories on the subject.
The 84th Infantry Division In The Battle Of Germany: November 1944-May 1945
Theodore Draper - 2009
Through the course of the next six months it would see some of the most ferocious fighting of the entire war. As soon as they landed they drove quickly into the Netherlands to prepare for an offensive into Nazi Germany. Their movements were dramatically altered as the German forces attempted to launch a momentous counter-offensive against the allies. The 84th division was sent to Belgium to plug a gap in the Allied line and fought back against the last ditch effort of Nazi forces. Draper takes the reader through every engagement that the division took part in from the first shots fired in anger through to crossing the Rhine into Germany and finally taking Hannover and making contact with Soviet forces in May 1945. Lt. Theodore Draper’s book is a unique account of the allied invasion of Germany. Rather relying on secondhand stories of the division’s actions months after the events had occurred, Draper was encouraged to go direct to the source, to the men themselves, from the commanding general to any private, for the most complete, firsthand information on every action. This book is largely based on hundreds of pages of such interviews, most of them within 48 hours of the unit’s relief and many of them while the unit was still fighting. “Though ostensibly a divisional history, Draper’s well-informed and interesting account is useful for an understanding of the war on the western front in general.” Robert Gale Woolbert, Foreign Affairs “This is the whole operation of the battle of Germany on the broad and individual level, the Siegfried Line, the fight to the Rhine, the Ardennes, the mad race to the Elbo, with credit attributed to men, companies, battalions where it is due.” Kirkus Reviews Theodore Draper was an American historian and political writer. He wrote many notable books during his career on a variety of subjects. During the Second World War he was inducted into the U. S. Army and worked in the historical section of the 84th Infantry Division. His book The 84th Infantry Division In The Battle Of Germany : November 1944-May 1945 was first published in 1946 and he passed away in 2006.
Brits: The War Against The IRA
Peter Taylor - 2001
Third part of trilogy documenting modern-day Northern Ireland, by the author of Provos and Loyalists
Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History
Giles Milton - 1999
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, Run's harvest of nutmeg turned it into the most lucrative of the Spice Islands, precipitating a fierce and bloody battle between the all-powerful Dutch East India Company and a small band of ragtag British adventurers led by the intrepid Nathaniel Courthope. The outcome of the fighting was one of the most spectacular deals in history: Britain ceded Run to Holland, but in return was given another small island, Manhattan. A brilliant adventure story of unthinkable hardship and savagery, the navigation of uncharted waters, and the exploitation of new worlds, Nathaniel's Nutmeg is a remarkable chapter in the history of the colonial powers.
SAS Operation Storm: Nine men against four hundred
Roger Cole - 2011
The tipping point, Mirbat, South Oman, 19 July 1972 is one of the least-known yet most crucial battles of modern times. If the SAS had been defeated at Mirbat, the Russian and Chinese plan for a communist foothold in the Middle East would have succeeded, with catastrophic consequences for the oil-hungry West. OPERATION STORM is a page-turning account of courage and resilience. Mirbat was a battle fought and won by nine SAS soldiers and a similar number of brave local people - some as young as ten years old - outnumbered by at least twenty-five to one. Roger Cole, one of the SAS soldiers who took part, and writer Richard Belfield have interviewed every SAS survivor who fought in the battle from the beginning to the end - the first time every single one of them has revealed their experience. OPERATION STORM is a classic story of bravery against impossible odds, minute by minute, bullet by bullet.
That Close: a memory of combat in Vietnam
Robert Driskill - 2017
The memoir tells his story starting from the ambivalence he had about being drafted through the firefights and wounds he experienced in Vietnam to the estrangement he felt as he walked out of Walter Reed hospital into a civilian world not very interested in a faraway war. It also tells a tale of the commonplace courage of the twenty-year-old infantrymen of Charley Company, 5th of the 12th, 199th Light Infantry Brigade, and of the cowardice and character flaws of a Lieutenant more interested in his own glory and advancement than the well-being of his platoon. The good, the bad, and the ugly of a country and an army fighting a distant war for unclear purposes are all on display in this account focused on nine months of war in 1969.
The First Casualty: The Untold Story of the Falklands War 2nd April 1982
Ricky D. Phillips - 2017
Just sixty Royal Marines stood in the way of an armada of thousands, 8,000 miles from home and with no support. The story that followed was one of a shameful defeat and ignominious surrender. A story which has lasted for 35 years. Now, with first-hand accounts from the Royal Marines themselves, from the Argentine Marines who fought against them and from the people of Stanley who watched the battle rage on their very doorsteps, a new history has emerged. It is the story of an epic and heroic defence on a scale with Rorke's Drift; a story which neither the British nor the Argentine governments wanted told. It is a battle denied; the battle of Stanley, a battle which - we are told - never happened.
Afghan Heat: SAS Operations in Afghanistan
Steve Stone - 2013
The book follows individual operations where special forces, aircraft, and the latest surveillance technology are fused together - in order to capture key figures or simply take out an enemy stronghold.The books account is both gritty and graphical as it follows the SAS, battling at times against overwhelming odds in a hostile country. Fighting a war hardened enemy with years of experience fighting occupying forces. Even these elite soldiers with advanced weaponry and immense fire support at their disposal are put to the ultimate test of skill and courage fighting in the 'Stan.'
A Tale of Two Subs: An Untold Story of World War II, Two Sister Ships, and Extraordinary Heroism
Jonathan J. McCullough - 2008
Naval history. Not only did several crewmembers survive the sinking - an extremely rare event in World War II submarine warfare - but several were aboard a Japanese aircraft carrier enroute to a POW camp when it was in turn torpedoed and sunk by the Sculpin's sister ship, the USS Sailfish. At the end of World War II, several unlikely survivors would tell a tale of endurance against these amazing reversals of fortune. For one officer in particular, who knew that being captured could have meant losing the war for the allies, his struggle was not in surviving, but in sealing his own fate in a heartbreaking act of heroism which culminated in the nation's highest tribute, the Medal of Honor. Sculpin Lt. Commander John Phillip Cromwell was one of the few who knew that American Naval Intelligence had succeeded in cracking Japan's top-secret codes. Cromwell also knew that if the Japanese confirmed this by torturing him, it would force Naval Intelligence to change their encryption, which would potentially change the course of the war. This is Cromwell's story as well.The incredible interconnection of the Sculpin and the Sailfish has been thoroughly researched by Jonathan McCullough. Through access to the few living survivors, scores of oral histories, never-before translated Japanese war documents, and interviews with Navy veterans, McCullough delivers a gripping and, intimate account for the reader.
The Cruel Sea
Nicholas Monsarrat - 1951
First published to great acclaim in 1951, The Cruel Sea remains a classic novel of endurance and daring.