The canvas is broad and deep, from the strategic perspective at the top to the cramped and claustrophobic life of the crews in their submersible steel tubes; from the feats of ‘ace’ commanders to the terrifying experiences of men under attack in this most pitiless form of warfare. Peter Padfield describes the technical and tactical measures by which the Western Allies countered Admiral Karl Dönitz’s U-boat ‘pack’ attacks in the all-important North Atlantic battle; the fanatical zeal with which, even after defeat, Dönitz continued sacrificing his young crews in outmoded boats, dubbed by one veteran ‘iron coffins’; while in the Pacific the superiority of American fleet submarines and radar allowed the U.S. to isolate Japan from her overseas sources of supply. Padfield argues that if this strategic potential had been realised earlier it could have saved thousands of lives in the bloody Pacific island campaigns, and even rendered the use of atomic bombs unnecessary. ‘Peter Padfield is the best British naval historian of his generation…His book…will now become the standard work on the subject.’ John Keegan, The Daily Telegraph‘This looks set to become the definitive work on submarine warfare in the Second World War…’ Paul Hoxton, Military Illustrated‘By far the best and most complete critical history of the submarine operations of all the combatants in the Second World War, at the same time providing vivid narrative accounts of particular actions…’Alan Cameron, Lloyd’s List‘Peter Padfield has written a superb history of a complex and controversial subject. It is a valuable addition to our body of history of World War II, and I recommend it highly.’Vice Admiral James F. Calvert USN Rtd., U.S.N.I Proceedings‘This monument to the submarine arms of the major belligerents tells the story of their triumphs and tragedies and comes from one of our ablest naval historians…’Graham Rhys-Jones, R.U.S.I.Journal‘…the book is very well written and enjoyable to read. The facts and statistics are mixed with well penned character studies and fast-moving descriptive narrative in a way that confirms the author’s stature as a leading military historian…’The Naval Review‘…a near flawless work of history that can be recommended both as a serious study and a compelling read.’The Officer Magazine‘Probably one of the most valuable books ever written on submarine operations and countermeasures for World War II history…in the ‘Bravo’ category.’Canadian Military History Book Review Supplement‘Padfield keeps an unwavering balance between providing the depth of history and maintaining an exciting narrative.’The Times

    For the first time, seven Soviet admirals, along with leading naval historian Dr. Gary Weir, reveal the successful spying missions, the technological breakthroughs, the confrontations with U.S. forces, and the undersea disasters that killed many hundreds of sailors.With decades of experience on submarines or commanding submarine fleets, these seven senior admirals, many highly decorated, give us the inside stories. They detail the undersea successes such as the blockade of the U.S. submarine base in Bangor, Washington, and the innovative surveillance techniques they developed to trail the U.S. Sixth fleet in the Mediterranean. They reveal the development of the first nuclear submarines, profiling Dr. Peregudov, the father of the Soviet nuclear submarine and the internecine battles among Soviet bureaucrats that led to the deaths of many Russian sailors. And they give first hand accounts of deadly confrontations, such as the sinking of K-219, off Bermuda and the collision of USS Taurog and the Soviet K-108, including unpublished photos of the incident's aftermath. Rising Tide also reveals the many catastrophes and the occasional heroic rescues, and answers many questions surrounding the sensational loss of the Kursk, the most advanced vessel in the Russian fleet.Covering submarines from the first advanced diesel subs in the 1950s to the Kursk in 2000, with the authority only senior naval officials could deliver, Rising Tide is the complete story of the Soviet side of the gripping, secret life of the submariners in the Cold War.

    Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS "Charlemagne" and, later, as a soldier with French forces during three years (1951-1954) in the Tonkin area, Vietnam. Paul recounts his time at the Sennheim military training base, where he was introduced to the rigorous discipline of body and mind: he then goes back to 1940, during the German invasion of France, when he was still a boy in Lorraine, hinting at his motivations for enlisting with the Waffen SS. He reveals his and many young soldiers' exciting and often humorous escapades at Greifenberg, his first love with a German girl helping refugees, his experiences and feelings during the combats at Korlin, during the strenuous defense of Kolberg, while regrouping at Neustrelitz and at the German defeat. With a companion he ends up at a castle delivering a group of women camp prisoners to a Russian officer, living in disguise among enemy soldiers until he escapes and surrender to the Americans. After his sentence, imprisonment, evasions and military service in Morocco, Paul is sent to fight in defense of bases north of Hanoi, Vietnam. He survives three years of fierce combats, assaults, ambushes, night patrols, fatal traps and mortal risks but, deep down, he compares his service with the Waffen SS during the last year of war with the inefficiency of the French Expeditionary Force in the Far East and comes out deeply frustrated. At almost 26, he has fought and lost in two wars, both against the communists, be they Soviet or Viet-Minh. Unemployed, and with the ideals of a 'Nouvelle Europe' in pieces, he briefly joins the French Foreign Legion, his last hope, but in the end choses another path. This is a unique memoir, packed with incident and recounting the story of one individual caught up in a series of life-changing events."

    to victory in World War II and who shaped the following decades with their larger-than-life legacies as rivals, peers, and friends.

    His "wolfpack" tactics resulted in a handful of U-boats sinking 14.5 million tons and nearly deciding the Battle of the Atlantic. Sentenced to ten years at the Nuremberg Trials, Doenitz wrote his memoirs upon his release. In a clear firm style he discusses the planning and execution of the U-boat campaign; the controversial sinking of the Laconia; America's "neutrality" before its entry into the war; the Normandy invasion; the July 1944 bomb plot; his encounters with Raeder, Göring, Speer, Himmler, and Hitler; as well as his own brief tenure as the last Führer. Doenitz's invaluable work allows the reader to view the war at sea through the periscope's eye.

    The siege was not lifted for two and a half years, by which time some three quarters of a million Leningraders had died of starvation.Anna Reid's Leningrad is a gripping, authoritative narrative history of this dramatic moment in the twentieth century, interwoven with indelible personal accounts of daily siege life drawn from diarists on both sides. They reveal the Nazis' deliberate decision to starve Leningrad into surrender and Hitler's messianic miscalculation, the incompetence and cruelty of the Soviet war leadership, the horrors experienced by soldiers on the front lines, and, above all, the terrible details of life in the blockaded city: the relentless search for food and water; the withering of emotions and family ties; looting, murder, and cannibalism- and at the same time, extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice.Stripping away decades of Soviet propaganda, and drawing on newly available diaries and government records, Leningrad also tackles a raft of unanswered questions: Was the size of the death toll as much the fault of Stalin as of Hitler? Why didn't the Germans capture the city? Why didn't it collapse into anarchy? What decided who lived and who died? Impressive in its originality and literary style, Leningrad gives voice to the dead and will rival Anthony Beevor's classic Stalingrad in its impact.

    BUT CHARLIE OWNED THE CLOCK! One morning there was nothing but hot, thick jungle and steaming swamp. And the Viet Cong. The next morning there were three hundred sweating, groaning men chopping and chain sawing a hole in that particular hunk of hell. And that's where Captain Mack Gerber and his Scorpion Squad were going to set up shop. Right in the VC's backyard. Gerber's orders were simple: Let the VC know they didn't own the delta anymore; let them know they were in a lastditch fight; and make sure it was the last thing they'd ever know. But Victor Charlie had their own plans. A clock was ticking. Soon all hell would break loose and there wouldn't be enough survivors left to do a ... body count.

    The author's journey as a young Naval Officer took him through the best and worst of these times, and his story carries lessons for military officers, leaders, and managers everywhere.

    The story highlights iconic moments of great drama pivotal to the nation's fortunes: John Paul Jones' attacks onthe British in the Revolution, the Barbary Wars, and the arduous conquest of Iwo Jima.The book illuminates the changes--technological, institutional, and functional--of the U.S. Navy from its days as a small frigate navy through the age of steam and steel to the modern era of electronics and missiles. Historian Craig L. Symonds captures the evolving culture of the Navy and debatesbetween policymakers about what role the institution should play in world affairs. Internal and external challenges dramatically altered the size and character of the Navy, with long periods of quiet inertia alternating with rapid expansion emerging out of crises. The history of the navy reflectsthe history of the nation as a whole, and its many changes derive in large part from the changing role of the United States itself.

    His primary mission was to take the city, crushing this crucial centre of communication and manufacturing, and to secure the valuable oil fields in the Caucasus. What happens next is well known to any student of modern history: a brutal war of attrition, characterised by fierce hand-to-hand combat, that lasted for nearly two years, and the eventual victory by a resolute Soviet Red Army. A ravaged German Army was pushed into full retreat. This was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe and a critical turning point of WWII. But the outcome could have been very different, as Peter Tsouras demonstrates in this fascinating alternate history of this fateful battle. By introducing minor - and realistic - adjustments, Tsouras presents a scenario in which the course of the battle runs quite differently, which in turn throws up disturbing possibilities regarding the outcome of the whole war.

    . . For the Japanese, confident over the easy victory at Pearl Harbor, the Midway operation had one objective; to draw out the U.S. Navy and destroy it. Thus, on June 4, 1942, Admiral Yamamoto launched his attack on the base at Midway Island with the largest fleet yet assembled in the Pacific, including 350 ships and more than 100,000 officers and men.It was a plan for victory . . . that ended in monumental defeat. Only after this crushing loss did the Japanese ask themselves: What should we have done that we did not do? Why did we fail?Now, for the first time, officers from the Japanese Imperial Navy open the sealed archives to tell the authoritative, dramatic story of what really happened at the historic Battle of Midway . . .

    'Diver' is an honest, moving and sometimes hilarious account of a hair-raisingly exciting career, both in the Royal Navy and in commercial deep-sea diving-training.

    Flagel unveils the big picture by using detailed top-ten lists, ranking the best, worst, first, and most significant elements of the largest and deadliest conflict in history.

    There, I underwent a life-changing experience. As I walked the beaches with the American veterans who had returned for this anniversary, men in their sixties and seventies, and listened to their stories, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. Ten years later, I returned to Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion, and by then I had come to understand what this generation of Americans meant to history. It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced."        In this superb book, Tom Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America's citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America. This generation was united not only by a common purpose, but also by common values--duty, honor, economy, courage, service, love of family and country, and, above all, responsibility for oneself. In this book, you will meet people whose everyday lives reveal how a generation persevered through war, and were trained by it, and then went on to create interesting and useful lives and the America we have today."At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world. They came home to joyous and short-lived celebrations and immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. A grateful nation made it possible for more of them to attend college than any society had ever educated, anywhere. They gave the world new science, literature, art, industry, and economic strength unparalleled in the long curve of history. As they now reach the twilight of their adventurous and productive lives, they remain, for the most part, exceptionally modest. They have so many stories to tell, stories that in many cases they have never told before, because in a deep sense they didn't think that what they were doing was that special, because everyone else was doing it too. "This book, I hope, will in some small way pay tribute to those men and women who have given us the lives we have today--an American family portrait album of the greatest generation."                In this book you'll meet people like Charles Van Gorder, who set up during D-Day a MASH-like medical facility in the middle of the fighting, and then came home to create a clinic and hospital in his hometown. You'll hear George Bush talk about how, as a Navy Air Corps combat pilot, one of his assignments was to read the mail of the enlisted men under him, to be sure no sensitive military information would be compromised. And so, Bush says, "I learned about life." You'll meet Trudy Elion, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, one of the many women in this book who found fulfilling careers in the changed society as a result of the war. You'll meet Martha Putney, one of the first black women to serve in the newly formed WACs. And you'll meet the members of the Romeo Club (Retired Old Men Eating Out), friends for life.         Through these and other stories in The Greatest Generation, you'll relive with ordinary men and women, military heroes, famous people of great achievement, and community leaders how these extraordinary times forged the values and provided the training that made a people and a nation great.From the Hardcover edition.

    From its harrowing combat missions over Libya to its appearance on the silver screen in movies like Top Gun and Executive Decision, the F-14 has become an icon of American air power.Now, for the first time in a single volume, Tomcat Fury explores the illustrious combat history of the F-14, from the Gulf of Sidra to the Iran-Iraq War to the skies over Afghanistan in the Global War on Terror.