What Happened to the Battleship

What Happened to the Battleship PDF Author: Chris Baker
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
ISBN: 1399070096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 599

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Book Description
In the hundreds of books written about battleships, the authors tend to draw down the curtain on the careers of these great vessels in September 1945, with the surrender of Japan. Yet, on that day some ninety-eight battleships or ex-battleships might be spotted around the world, and eleven of them were in or around Tokyo Bay for the surrender itself. What happened to all those ships? This new book takes a fresh look at the slow demise of the battleship. It examines the decisions made by the major world powers after 1945, and their aspirations to retain battleships in their navies, despite financial stringency. It places the history and role of battleships after 1945 in their geo-political context, centered around the Cold War and the need for the West to face down an aggressive Soviet Union. It also examines the impact on battleships of operational analysis of the Second World War and new technological developments, notably the atom bomb and the guided missile. The book uses the wealth of information from ship’s books, ship’s logs and gun logs to document in considerable detail what the ships actually did after the Second World War, with a particular focus on those of the Royal Navy. It covers United States battleship operations in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War, as well as the deterrent role played by battleships for NATO from the 1950s to the 1990s. Finally, it brings the story up to date by documenting the preservation as museum ships of the eight dreadnoughts which still exist today in the United States. Extensively illustrated with photographs of the huge range of activities of battleships after 1945, from their use as Fleet flagships to Royal or Presidential yachts and more poignantly as target ships, this new book will appeal equally to the historic ship enthusiast and naval specialist, and provide a novel perspective through a battleship–shaped lens on late twentieth-century history for the more general reader.

What Happened to the Battleship

What Happened to the Battleship PDF Author: Chris Baker
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
ISBN: 1399070096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 599

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Book Description
In the hundreds of books written about battleships, the authors tend to draw down the curtain on the careers of these great vessels in September 1945, with the surrender of Japan. Yet, on that day some ninety-eight battleships or ex-battleships might be spotted around the world, and eleven of them were in or around Tokyo Bay for the surrender itself. What happened to all those ships? This new book takes a fresh look at the slow demise of the battleship. It examines the decisions made by the major world powers after 1945, and their aspirations to retain battleships in their navies, despite financial stringency. It places the history and role of battleships after 1945 in their geo-political context, centered around the Cold War and the need for the West to face down an aggressive Soviet Union. It also examines the impact on battleships of operational analysis of the Second World War and new technological developments, notably the atom bomb and the guided missile. The book uses the wealth of information from ship’s books, ship’s logs and gun logs to document in considerable detail what the ships actually did after the Second World War, with a particular focus on those of the Royal Navy. It covers United States battleship operations in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War, as well as the deterrent role played by battleships for NATO from the 1950s to the 1990s. Finally, it brings the story up to date by documenting the preservation as museum ships of the eight dreadnoughts which still exist today in the United States. Extensively illustrated with photographs of the huge range of activities of battleships after 1945, from their use as Fleet flagships to Royal or Presidential yachts and more poignantly as target ships, this new book will appeal equally to the historic ship enthusiast and naval specialist, and provide a novel perspective through a battleship–shaped lens on late twentieth-century history for the more general reader.

The "Maine"

The Author: Charles Dwight Sigsbee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description


The Battleship Book

The Battleship Book PDF Author: Robert M. Farley
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 1479405574
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
From the moment when the launching of HMS Dreadnought made every capital ship in the world obsolete overnight, we have been fascinated with these powerful surface combatants. Here Robert M. Farley looks at the history and folklore that makes these ships enduring symbols of national power—and sometimes national futility. From Arizona to Yamato, here are more than sixty lavishly illustrated accounts of battleships from the most well-known to the most unusual, including at least one ship from every nation that ever owned a modern battleship. Separate essays and sidebars look at events and lore that greatly affected battleships.

Battleship

Battleship PDF Author: Martin Middlebrook
Publisher: Penguin Uk
ISBN: 9780141391199
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
On Wednesday 10 December 1941, the third day of the war with Japan, two Royal Navy capital ships were sunk off Malaya by air torpedo attack. They had not requested the air support that could have saved them and 840 men died in the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser HMS Repulse.

Sacred Ground

Sacred Ground PDF Author: Edward Tabor Linenthal
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252061714
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
"Examines how different groups of Americans have competed to control, define, and own cherished national stories relating to events at four battlefields."--Amazon.com.

The Mighty Hood

The Mighty Hood PDF Author: Ernle Bradford
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497625742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
The story of the HMS Hood, the last great warship of the British Royal Navy, told by the bestselling author of Hannibal. When it was launched in 1918, the HMS Hood was the flagship of the Royal Navy. As a battle cruiser, “The Mighty Hood” was fast enough to evade enemy cruiser ships and powerful enough to destroy them. But for all the Hood’s might, it had one fatal flaw: armor had been sacrificed for speed. In 1941, the Hood confronted the legendary German warship Bismarck. A salvo from the enemy penetrated the Hood’s ammunition magazine, destroying the British ship and killing all but three of its crew. The brutal defeat marked the end of the Royal Navy’s dominance. But it also inspired Winston Churchill’s vow to sink the Bismarck—a vow that in time was fulfilled. Through oral history and documentary research, Ernle Bradford chronicles the Hood’s career from design to demise, with colorful insight into life aboard the ship as well as its broader historical significance.

Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century

Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century PDF Author: Bernard Ireland
Publisher: HarperResource
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
All the greatest battleships from World War I to the 1991 Gulf War.

Sacred Vessels

Sacred Vessels PDF Author: Robert L. O'Connell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195080068
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
From a broad, historical perspective, the dreadnought represents an archetype, and its history a kind of moral tale. Its awesome size, its formidable presence, and its immense power have gained it tremendous respect, loyalty, and, as Robert O'Connell shows in this myth-shattering book, unwarranted longevity as well. With provocative insight and wit he offers us an irreverent history of the modern battleship and its place in American history, from the sinking of the coal-fueled Maine in 1898 to the deployment of the cruise missile-armed Missouri in the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The modern navies were the first of the armed services faced with fundamental and abrupt technological change. The wooden sailing ships that had fought sea battles for nearly two centuries were, in only a few years, rendered obsolete by a veritable tidal wave of innovation. With the deployment of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought in 1903, the new technology reached its full fruition: the gigantic sleek, steel-clad, many-gunned vessel that would rule the seas (or at least the minds of Naval commanders) for years to come. O'Connell shows how other nations raced to emulate this new prototype (much in the fashion of the nuclear arms race of later decades), usually at the expense of much more effective forms of naval force. He also demonstrates compellingly the dashed expectations for the battleship occasioned by the outbreak of war in 1914. While many anticipated a massive twentieth-century Trafalgar, in actuality dreadnoughts everywhere avoided battle, and when they did fight, the results were most often inconclusive or even irrelevant. With the Battle of Jutland in 1916--the only real naval showdown of the war--the ineffectiveness of the battleship as the pre-eminent weapon of war was made abundantly clear: the German navy scored on only 120 hits out of 3,597 heavy shells fired while the British had an even more dismal showing--100 out of 4,598, or a hit ratio of 2.17%. Yet, in spite of this display of impotence, the world's great naval yards continued to turn out the huge vessels. O'Connell observes that even after the heart of the American fleet was sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, the almost superstitious faith in the battleship insured its survival. While they have never played a decisive role in the outcome of any modern war, they have continued to be resurrected and refurbished--even equipped with cruise missles--right up to the present day. Sacred Vessels is more than the unmasking of a false idol of naval history. It is a cautionary tale about the often unacknowledged influence of human faith, culture, and tradition on the exceedingly important, costly, and suppossedly rational process of national defense. Not only is it a gripping tale well-told, it is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the dynamics involved in the arming of nations.

Leyte Gulf 1944 (1)

Leyte Gulf 1944 (1) PDF Author: Mark Stille
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472842812
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
In October 1944, the US prepared to invade the Philippines to cut Japan off from its resource areas in Southeast Asia. This is the first in a two-part study of the October 23-26 Battle of Leyte Gulf, which resulted in a decisive defeat for the Japanese.

The Last Ship

The Last Ship PDF Author: William Brinkley
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698156676
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
Hailed as “an extraordinary novel of men at war” (The Washington Post) this is the book that inspired the TNT television series starring Eric Dane, Rhona Mitra, Adam Baldwin and Michael Bay as Executive Producer. The unimaginable has happened. The world has been plunged into all-out nuclear war. Sailing near the Arctic Circle, the U.S.S. Nathan James is relatively unscathed, but the future is grim and Captain Thomas is facing mutiny from the tattered remnants of his crew. With civilization in ruins, he urges those that remain—one-hundred-and-fifty-two men and twenty-six women—to pull together in search of land. Once they reach safety, however, the men and women on board realize that they are earth’s last remaining survivors—and they’ve all been exposed to radiation. When none of the women seems able to conceive, fear sets in. Will this be the end of humankind?