Naval Forces

The story begins in 1629, when the pride of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, is on its maiden voyage en route from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, laden down with the greatest treasure to leave Holland....

Borneo: The Last Campaign tells the story of Operation OBOE, the massive, three-pronged assault on the vast Japanese-held island of Borneo in 1945. It was one of the largest amphibious invasions of the entire war, and a virtually all-Australian operation.

From popular Pacific Theatre expert Jeffrey Cox comes this insightful new history of the critical Guadalcanal and Solomons campaign at the height of World War II....

In 1858, 14-year-old Narcisse Pelletier sailed from Marseilles in the French trader Saint-Paul. With a cargo of wine, they stopped in Bombay, then Hong Kong, and from there they set sail with more than 300 Chinese prospectors bound for the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo....

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the British asked Australia for help. With some misgivings, the Australian government sent five destroyers to beef up the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean....

This riveting chronicle of submarine warfare is the first to cover all the major submarine campaigns of the war, describing, in detail, the operations of the British, American, Japanese, Italian, and German submarine and anti-submarine forces....

Outgunned and outmanned on the Pacific Ocean, a small American fleet defied the odds and turned the tide of World War II....

Submarines and the sailors who serve in them have been and remain the tip of the spear of Australia's defences. For the first time, this is their unique story.

The extraordinary story of how the British Royal Navy allowed one nation to rise to a level of power unprecedented in history....

Using his own experiences and correspondence with other U-boat crewmen, Hans Goebeler offers rich details about what life was like in the German Navy under Hitler....

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...

A gripping history chronicling the fits and starts of American special operations and the ultimate rise of the Navy SEALs from unarmed frogmen to elite, go-anywhere commandos - as told by one of their own....

The growth of piracy led to a major surge in attacks in the Caribbean and along North America’s Atlantic seaboard. With the fragile maritime economy of the Americas threatened with collapse, major ports were threatened and trade brought to a standstill, the British government finally declared war.

A sweeping, lavish one-volume history of the rise of American naval power during World War II....

In 1939 off the New England coast, the submarine USS Squalus accidentally sinks to the bottom of the sea during a training exercise, killing half her crew....

In 1768 Captain James Cook and his crew set out on a small British naval vessel in search of a missing continent....

A vivid account of the famous St Nazaire Raid that demonstrates the sheer bravery of the British Commandos and the Royal Navy....

Hawaii, 1941. War clouds with Japan are gathering and the islands of Hawaii have become battlegrounds of spies, intelligence agents, and military officials - with the island's residents caught between them....

The Convoy represents a fresh approach to the story of the Battle of the Atlantic. It is also the first to deal with the more spectacular story of HG-76, a major turning point in the naval war....

Through diaries, personal interviews, and letters, preeminent historian John Wukovits brings to life the human story of the WWII Pacific theater's victorious Destroyer Squadron 21 and its men....

In Lonely Vigil, Walter Lord, the number one New York Times best-selling author of A Night to Remember and The Miracle of Dunkirk, tells of the survivors of the campaign and what they risked to win the war in the Pacific....

The extraordinary story of the World War II air, land, and sea campaign that brought the U.S. Navy to the apex of its strength and marked the rise of the United States as a global superpower....

Stalking the Red Bear, for the first time ever, describes the action principally from the perspective of a commanding officer of a nuclear submarine during the Cold War....

An epic account of how the Royal Navy tracked down, cornered, and sank one of the most fearsome German warships of the Second World War....

Following the disastrous Java Sea campaign, the Allies went on the offensive in the Pacific in a desperate attempt to halt the Japanese forces that were rampaging across the region. With the conquest of Australia a very real possibility, the stakes were high....

At Sea Against the Soviet Fleet examines the critical transformation of naval intelligence during a pivotal era marked by the Cold War and the Vietnam conflict. Bryan Leese meticulously details how US Navy operational intelligence evolved to meet the complexities of modern naval warfare, particularly in response to the increasing threats posed by the Soviet Navy. This book begins by examining the Vietnam War and the institutionalization of shipboard operational intelligence, or what Navy intelligence calls Opintel.

This memoir adventure takes the listener through a twenty year career in naval aviation that included flying attack jets from aircraft carriers, flight instructing, Naval Test Pilot School, experimental and operational flight test, engineering management for F/A-18 aircraft, initial flight test of the Super Hornet aircraft and overseas aircraft maintenance after 11 September 2001. NASA was the start of David's career while working with astronauts and engineers.

The greatest naval conflict in history occurred during World War II from 1939 to 1945. Author Vince O'Hara offers a truly global perspective of WWII at sea that captures every aspect of a vast naval conflict that involved dozens of nations, more than 15,000 ships, and 43.7 million tons of shipping. Approximately 570,000 lives were lost at sea in those six years. Here, the naval action begins in the Baltic Sea before dawn on September 1, 1939, when a German battleship opened fire on Polish troops barricaded in a fortress in the port city of Danzig, Poland.

It takes a special type of person to serve in a nation’s navy, especially on long voyages that separate men and women from their loved ones, and no service is both loved and hated as that aboard submarines, for very few people ever serve on them on a whim. For one thing, the psychological impact of being trapped for long periods underwater in tight, cramped quarters is more than many people can stand.

On a cold day in early January 1864, Robert E. Lee wrote to Confederate president Jefferson Davis "The time is at hand when, if an attempt can be made to capture the enemy's forces at New Berne, it should be done." Over the next few months, Lee's dispatch would precipitate a momentous series of events as the Confederates, threatened by a supply crisis and an emerging peace movement, sought to seize Federal bases in eastern North Carolina.