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Before Jutland is a definitive study of the naval engagements in northern European waters in 1914-15 when the German High Sea Fleet faced the Grand Fleet in the North Sea and the Russian Fleet in the Baltic. Author James Goldrick reexamines one of the key periods of naval operations in the First World War, arguing that a focus on the campaign on the western front conceals the reality that the Great War was also a maritime conflict. Combining new historical information from primary sources with a comprehensive analysis of the operational issues, this book is an extensive revision of The King's Ships Were at Sea, Goldrick's earlier work on this naval campaign. In all, Before Jutland shows not only what happened, but how the various navies evolved to meet the challenges that they faced during the Great War and whether or not that evolution was successful.

Written by veteran aerospace journalist Bob Ward, who spent years investigating his subject, the father of modern rocketry, this biography presents a revealing but even-handed portrait of the one-time Nazi Party member who brought the United States into the Space Age.

This is the first biography of Capt. Joe Rochefort, the Officer in Charge of Station Hypo the U.S. Navys decrypt unit at Pearl Harbor and his key role in breaking the Imperial Japanese Navys main code before the Battle of Midway. It brings together the disparate threads of Rocheforts life and career, beginning with his enlistment in the Naval Reserve in 1918 at age 17 (dropping out of high school and adding a year to his age). It chronicles his earliest days as a mustang (an officer who has risen from the ranks), his fortuitous posting to Washington, where he headed the Navys codebreaking desk at age 25, then, in another unexpected twist, found himself assigned to Tokyo to learn Japanese.This biography records Rocheforts surprising love-hate relationship with cryptanalysis, his joyful exit from the field, his love of sea duty, his adventure-filled years in the 30s as the right-hand man to the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, and his reluctant return to codebreaking in mid-1941 when he was ordered to head the Navys decrypt unit at Pearl (Station Hypo).The book focuses on Rocheforts inspiring leadership of Hypo, recording first his frustrating months in late 1941 searching for Yamamotos fleet, then capturing a guilt-ridden Rochefort in early 1942 mounting a redemptive effort to track that fleet after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor . It details his critical role in May 1942 when he and his team, against the bitter opposition of some top Navy brass, concluded Midway was Yamamotos invasion target, making possible a victory regarded by many as the turning point in the Pacific War.The account also tells the story of Rocheforts ouster from Pearl, the result of the machinations of key officers in Washington, first to deny him the Distinguished Service Medal recommended by Admiral Nimitz, then to effect his removal as OIC of Hypo. The book reports his productive final years in the Navy when he supervises the building of a floating drydock on the West Coast, then, back in Washington, finds himself directing a planning body charged with doing spade work leading to the invasion of Japan. The Epilogue narrates the postwar effort waged by Rocheforts Hypo colleagues to obtain for him the DSM denied in 1942a drive that pays off in 1986 when President Reagan awards him the medal posthumously at a White House ceremony attended by his daughter and son. It also explores Rocheforts legacy, primarily his pioneering role at Pearl in which, contrary to Washingtons wishes, he reported directly to Commander in Chief, US Fleet, providing actionable intelligence without any delays and enabling codebreaking to play the key role it did in the Battle of Midway.Ultimately, this book is aimed at bringing Joe Rochefort to life as the irreverent, fiercely independent and consequential officer that he was. It assumes his career cant be understood without looking at his entire life. It seeks to capture the interplay of policy and personality, and the role played by politics and personal rifts at the highest levels of Navy power during a time of national crisis. This bio emerges as a history of the Navys intelligence culture.

This is the story of a little-known Soviet-Japanese conflict that influenced the outbreak and shaped the course of the Second World War. In the summers of 1937, 1938, and 1939, Japan and the Soviet Union fought a series of border conflicts. The first was on the Amur River days before the outbreak of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. In 1938, division-strength units fought a bloody 2-week battle at Changkufeng near the Korea-Manchuria-Soviet border. The Nomonhan conflict (May-September 1939) on the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier, was a small undeclared war, with over 100,000 troops, 500 tanks and aircraft, and 30,000-50,000 killed and wounded. In the climactic battle, August 20-31, the Japanese were annihilated. This coincided precisely with the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (August 23, 1939) the green light to Hitler's invasion of Poland and the outbreak of WW II one week later. These events are connected. This book relates these developments and weaves them together.From May through July 1939, the conflict was provoked and escalated by the Japanese, whose assaults were repulsed by the Red Army. In August, Stalin unleashed a simultaneous military and diplomatic counter strike. Zhukov, the Soviet commander, launched an offensive that crushed the Japanese. At the same time, Stalin concluded an alliance with Hitler, Japan's nominal ally, leaving Tokyo diplomatically isolated and militarily humiliated.The fact that these events coincided was no coincidence. Europe was sliding toward war as Hitler prepared to attack Poland. Stalin sought to avoid a two-front war against Germany and Japan. His ideal outcome would be for the fascist/militarist capitalists (Germany, Italy, and Japan) to fight the bourgeois/democratic capitalists (Britain, France, and perhaps the United States), leaving the Soviet Union on the sidelines while the capitalists exhausted themselves. The Nazi-Soviet Pact pitted Germany against Britain and France and allowed Stalin to deal decisively with an isolated Japan, which he did at Nomonhan.Zhukov won his spurs at Nomonhan and won Stalins confidence to entrust him with the high command in 1941, when he halted the Germans at the gates of Moscow with reinforcements from the Soviet Far East. The Far Eastern reserves were deployed westward in the autumn of 1941 when Moscow learned that Japan would not attack the Soviet Far East, because it decided to expand southward to seize the oil-rich Dutch East Indies, which led them to attack Pearl Harbor.The notorious Japanese officer, TSUJI Masanobu, who played a central role at Nomonhan, was an important figure in the decision to attack Pearl Harbor. In 1941, Col. Tsuji was a staff officer at Imperial General HQ. Because of the U.S. oil embargo on Japan, the Imperial Navy wanted to seize the Dutch East Indies. Only the U.S. Pacific Fleet stood in the way. Some army leaders, however, wanted to attack the U.S.S.R., avenging the defeat at Nomonhan while the Red Army was being smashed by the German blitzkreig. Tsuji, an influencial leader, backed the Navy position that led to Pearl Harbor. According to senior Japanese officials, Tsuji was the most influential Army advocate of war with the United States. Tsuji later wrote that his experience of Soviet fire-power at Nomonhan convinced him not to take on the Russians in 1941

Applauded by the public and revered by the men who served under him, Adm. William F. Halsey was one of the leading American personalities of World War II.

Hailed as one of the finest examples of aviation research, this comprehensive 1984 study presents a detailed and scrupulously accurate operational history of carrier-based air warfare. From the earliest operations in the Pacific through the decisive Battle of Midway, it offers a narrative account of how ace fighter pilots like Jimmy Thach and Butch O'Hare and their skilled VF squadron mates - called the "e;first team"e; - amassed a remarkable combat record in the face of desperate odds. Tapping both American and Japanese sources, historian John B. Lundstrom reconstructs every significant action and places these extraordinary fighters within the context of overall carrier operations. He writes from the viewpoint of the pilots themselves, after interviewing some fifty airmen from each side, to give readers intimate details of some of the most exciting aerial engagements of the war. At the same time he assesses the role the fighter squadrons played in key actions and shows how innovations in fighter tactics and gunnery techniques were a primary reason for the reversal of American fortunes. After more than twenty years in print, the book remains the definitive account and is being published in paperback for the first time to reach an even larger audience.

This well-documented and hard-hitting biography of the thirteenth commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps succeeds in converting John A. Lejeune from a near mythical figure in corps history to a flesh and blood officer who helped build the service from a small appendage of the U.S. Navy to an important arm of naval warfare.Commandant from 1920 to 1929, when he retired from military service to become president of Virginia Military Institute, Major General Lejeune is regarded by many as the man most responsible for the establishment of the modern Marine Corps. In capturing the life and times of this visionary leader who directed the corps toward major amphibious operations, Merrill Bartlett provides vivid insight into the political and military giants of the era and shows Lejeune to be an adroit player of Washington politics and a shrewd manipulator who marshalled the energies and loyalties of his senior officers to accomplish his vision

Presents a thorough chronology and atlas of naval warfare from the Age of Galleys to The Nuclear Age.

Here, for the first time in English, is an illuminating new German perspective on the decisive Blitzkrieg campaign of 1940. Karl-Heinz Frieser's account provides the definitive explanation for Germany's startling success and the equally surprising and rapid military collapse of France and Britain on the European continent. In a little over a month, Germany decisively defeated the Allies in battle, a task that had not been achieved in four years of brutal fighting during World War I.First published in 1995 as the official German history of the 1940 campaign in the west, the book goes beyond standard explanations to show that German victory was not inevitable and French defeat was not preordained. Contrary to the usual accounts of the campaign, Frieser illustrates that the military systems of both Germany and France were solid and that their campaign planning was sound. The key to victory or defeat, he argues, was the execution of operational plansboth preplanned and ad hocamid the eternal Clausewitzian combat factors of friction and the fog of war. Frieser shows why on the eve of the campaign the British and French leaders had good cause to be confident and why many German generals were understandably concerned that disaster was looming for them.This study explodes many of the myths concerning German Blitzkrieg warfare and the planning for the 1940 campaign. A groundbreaking new interpretation of a topic that has long interested students of military history, it is being published in cooperation with the Association of the U.S. Army

In the mid-1950s a small group of overworked, underpaid scientists and engineers, working on a remote base in the Mojave Desert, developed a weapon no one had asked for but that everyone was looking for. Sidewinder is the story of how that unorthodox team at China Lake, lead by the visionary Bill McLean, overcame Navy bureaucracy and more heavily funded projects to develop the world's best air-to-air missile. Based on years of research and hundreds of interviews, Westrums study examines the unique military-civilian cult of creativity that helped Mclean and his China Lake team produce an amazing array of technological and engineering marvels. In the intellectual pressure cooker provided by the desert isolation, the scientists dreamed and tinkered while test pilots such as Wally Schirra and Glenn Tierney took to the air, often risking life and limb to test a fledgling system. Against the ongoing story of billion-dollar weapons development contracts, astronomical cost overruns, and defense acquisitions scandals, this revealing, highly readable account of the development of one of the most successful weapons in history provides an instructive contrast.

This memoir of James Stavridis' two years in command of the destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) reveals the human side of what it is like to be in charge of a warship for the first time and in the midst of international crisis. From Haiti to the Balkans to the Arabian Gulf, the Barry was involved in operations throughout the world during his 1993-1995 tour. Drawing on daily journals he kept for the entire period, the author reveals the complex nature of those deployments in a 'real time' context and describes life on board the Barry and liberty ashore for sailors and officers alike.With all the joy, doubt, self-examination, hope, and fear of a first command, he offers an honest examination of his experience from the bridge to help readers grasp the true nature of command at sea. The window he provides into the personal lives of the crew illuminates not only their hard work in a ship that spent more than 70 percent of its time underway, but also the sacrifices of their families ashore. Stavridis credits his able crew for the many awards the Barry won while he was captain, including the Battenberg Cup for top ship in the Atlantic Fleet. Naval aficionados who like seagoing fiction will be attracted to the book, as will those fascinated by life at sea. Officers from all the services, especially surface warfare naval officers aspiring to command, will find these lessons of a first command by one of the Navy's most respected admirals both entertaining and instructive.