LITMIR.BIZ

This is the remarkable story of an airplane that became a legend–with a sleek silhouette and bent wings, it doubled as a day and night fighter, could fly off carriers or from land, and served both as a dive bomber and reconnaissance plane. Filled with facts and figures, this fast-paced history begins with the nerve-wracking test flights of the 1940s and concludes with the F4Us that were active thirty-eight years later. Placed skillfully in between are the stories that gave birth to the legend: the exploits of the aces, including the Medal of Honor recipient who shot down twenty-five enemy planes, and the details of the combat missions of Charles A. Lindbergh. During thirty months of combat in World War II with the U.S. Navy and Marines, the Corsair shot down more than two thousand Japanese planes. In Korea the U-bird, as it was called, was credited with ten aerial victories.A trip down memory lane for anyone who has followed the career of this Cadillac of the props, this new paperback edition of a book first published in hardcover in 1979 offers fine historical aviation reading that presents a riveting picture of the men and machine that helped win two wars.

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Between 1793 and 1815 two decades of unrelenting naval warfare raised the sailing man of war to the zenith of its effectiveness as a weapon of war. Every significant sea power was involved in this conflict, and at some point virtually all of them were arrayed against Great Britain. A large number of enemy warships were captured in battle and the Admiralty ordered accurate drafts to be made of many of these prizes. Consequently, ships from the navies of France, Spain, the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, as well as from Britain, were illustrated by an unprecedented variety of paintings, drawings, models or plans.

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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

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Reminding readers that the Cold War was actually a time of hot wars, spying, murders, defections, shoot downs of reconnaissance aircraft, and a space race, the authors uncover some unknown or long-forgotten incidents of the period. Among them, the murder of a U.S. naval attache on the Orient Express, an East German soldier s leap to the West in Berlin, two CIA officers twenty years in a Chinese prison, Cpt. Bert Mizusawa s rescue under fire of a Soviet defector in the Korean DMZ, a North Korean pilot s defection in a MiG fighter, the USS Forrestal fire, and the Soviets putting the first man in space.

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“Wheel books” were once found in the uniform pockets of virtually all junior officers and many senior petty officers. Each small notebook was unique to the Sailor carrying it, but all had in common a collection of data and wisdom that the individual deemed useful in the effective execution of his or her duties. Often used as a substitute for experience among neophytes and as a portable library of reference information for more experienced personnel, those weathered pages contained everything from the time of the next tide, to leadership hints from a respected chief petty officer, to the color coding of the phone-and-distance line used in underway replenishments.In that same tradition, the Naval Institute has created and aptly named the Wheel Book series, portable libraries culled from USNI’s vast array of information that has accumulated for more than a century. Articles from the Institute’s flagship publication Proceedings are combined with selections from USNI’s oral history program and from Naval Institute Press books to create unique guides on a wide array of relevant professional subjects.Just as the “wheel books” of yesterday served the fleet well, the Naval Institute Wheel Books of today provide supplemental information, pragmatic advice, and cogent analysis on topics important to modern naval professionals. Recognizing that leadership is vital to any functioning organization of people, the Naval Institute has devoted countless pages of its publications to the subject of naval leadership, providing start-up guidance to neophytes, giving voice to the accumulated wisdom and experience of those who have led, and serving as a forum in search of answers to the many questions that have always been a part of this vital but sometimes elusive practice. In these pages are some of the more outstanding examples of this wealth of knowledge, gathered here for the use of both would-be and seasoned leaders in the never-ending quest for better leadership.

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Unlike Alfred Thayer Mahan, Britain’s great maritime strategist Sir Julian Corbett believed that victory in war does not come simply by the exercise of sea power and that, historically, this has never been the case. Corbett’s keen analysis of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 as presented in this work, along with his discussion of the pros and cons of limited conflict will be of great value to our understanding of today’s limited wars.Based on intelligence material provided by the Japanese government, this work was written as an official study in the years just before World War One and classified “confidential” by the Royal Navy. The two-volume study demonstrates the lessons the war held for the future and shows the essential differences between maritime and continental warfare, while also exploring their interaction.

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When grace Hooper retired as a rear admiral from the U.S. Navy in 1986, she was the first woman restricted line officer to reach flag rank and, at the age of seventy-nine, the oldest serving officer in the Navy. A mathematician by training who became a computer scientist, the eccentric and outspoken Hoper helped propel the Navy into the computer age. She also was a superb publicist for the Navy, appearing frequently on radio and television and quoted regularly in newspapers and magazines. Yet in spite of all the attention she received, until now «Amazing Grace,» as she was called, has never been the subject of a full biography. Kathleen Broome Williams looks at Hooper's entire naval career, from the time she joined the Waves and was sent in 1943 to work on the Mark 1 computer at Harvard, where she became one of the country's first computer programmers. Thanks to this early Navy introduction to computing, the author explains, Hooper had a distinguished civilian career in commercial computing after the war, gaining fame for her part in the creation of COBOL. The admiral's Navy days were far from over, however, and Williams tells how Hopper–already past retirement age–was recalled to active duty at the Pentagon in 1967 to standardize computer-programming languages for Navy computers. Her temporary appointment lasted for nineteen years while she standardized COBOL for the entire department of defense. Based on extensive interviews with colleague and family and on archival material never before examined, this biography not only illuminates Hopper's pioneering accomplishments in a field that came to be dominated by men, but provides a fascinating overview of computing from its beginnings inWorld War II to the late 1980s.

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Striking the Hornets’ Nest provides the first extensive analysis of the Northern Bombing Group (NBG), the Navy’s most innovative aviation initiative of World War I and one of the world’s first dedicated strategic bombing programs. Very little has been written about the Navy’s aviation activities in World War I and even less on the NBG. Standard studies of strategic bombing tend to focus on developments in the Royal Air Force or the U.S. Army Air Service.This work concentrates on the origins of strategic bombing in World War I, and the influence this phenomenon had on the Navy’s future use of the airplane. The NBG program faced enormous logistical and personnel challenges. Demands for aircraft, facilities, and personnel were daunting, and shipping shortages added to the seemingly endless delays in implementing the program.Despite the impediments, the Navy (and Marine Corps) triumphed over organizational hurdles and established a series of bases and depots in northern France and southern England in the late summer and early fall of 1918. Ironically, by the time the Navy was ready to commence bombing missions, the German retreat had caused abandonment of the submarine bases the NBG had been created to attack. The men involved in this program were pioneers, overcoming major obstacles only to find they were no longer needed.Though the Navy rapidly abandoned its use of strategic bombing after World War I, their brief experimentation directed the future use of aircraft in other branches of the armed forces. It is no coincidence that Robert Lovett, the young Navy reserve officer who developed much of the NBG program in 1918, spent the entire period of World War II as Assistant Secretary of War for Air where he played a crucial role organizing and equipping the strategic bombing campaign unleashed against Germany and Japan. Rossano and Wildenberg have provided a definitive study of the NBG, a subject that has been overlooked for too long.

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Famous as the «boots on the ground,» U.S. Marines have long played a vital role in the air as well. In these pages, readers will find both history and analysis as Naval Institute authors record and assess this lesser-known but significant aspect of «Leatherneck» combat over the last century.

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Adopted by the U.S. Navy for issue to all new Sailors, A Sailor’s History of the U.S. Navy brings to life the events that have shaped and inspired the Navy of today while highlighting the roles of all Sailors—from seaman to admiral. Rather than focus entirely upon such naval icons as Stephen Decatur and Chester Nimitz, as most histories do, author Thomas J. Cutler, a retired lieutenant commander and former second class petty officer, brings to the forefront the contributions of enlisted people. You’ll read about Quartermaster Peter Williams, who steered the ironclad Monitor into history, and Hospital Corpsman Tayinikia Campbell, who saved lives in USS Cole after she was struck by terrorists in Yemen.Unlike most histories, A Sailor’s History is arranged thematically rather than chronologically. Chapters are built around the Navy’s core values of honor, courage, and commitment, its traditions of «Don’t Tread on Me» and «Don’t Give Up the Ship,» and other significant aspects of the Navy.As Cutler states in his preface, the book is not a whitewash. He includes mistakes and defeats along with the achievements and victories as he draws a portrait of a Navy growing stronger and smarter while turning tragedy into triumph. The result is a unique account that captures the Navy’s heritage as much as its history and provides inspiration as well as information while emphasizing that most essential element of naval history: the Sailor.

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