LITMIR.BIZ

In this entertaining history of the Yangtze Patrol, Tolley gives a lively presentation of the Chinese political situation over the past century and describes the bombing of the Panay, the siege of Shanghai, the battle of Wanhsien, and the Nanking incident. He also offers a liberal serving of colorful anecdotes and numerous period photographs.

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The U.S. Naval Institute Chronicles series focuses on the relevance of history by exploring topics like significant battles, personalities, and service components. Tapping into the U.S. Naval Institute's robust archives, these carefully selected volumes help readers understand nuanced subjects by providing unique perspectives and some of the best contributions that have helped shape naval thinking over the many decades since the Institute’s founding in 1873.Since its founding 100 years ago, Navy Reserve Sailors have served in every conflict from World War I to the present. The exploits of the U.S. Navy Reserve have many times been chronicled in the pages of Proceedings and Naval History. This edition of Chronicles culls articles and excerpts from that vast library.

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Despite incredible political, military, and intelligence risks, and after six years of secret preparations, the CIA attempted to salvage the sunken Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 from the depths of the North Pacific Ocean in early August 1974. This audacious effort was carried out under the cover of an undersea mining operation sponsored by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. “Azorian”—incorrectly identified as Project Jennifer by the press— was the most ambitious ocean engineering endeavor ever attempted and can be compared to the 1969 moon landing for its level of technological achievement. Following the sinking of a Soviet missile submarine in March 1968, U.S. intelligence agencies were able to determine the precise location and to develop a means of raising the submarine from a depth of more than 16,000 feet. Previously, the deepest salvage attempt of a submarine had been accomplished at 245 feet. The remarkable effort to reach the K-129, which contained nuclear-armed torpedoes and missiles as well as cryptographic equipment, was conducted with Soviet naval ships a few hundred yards from the lift ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer. While other books have been published about this secret project, none has provided an accurate and detailed account of this remarkable undertaking. To fully document the story, the authors conducted extensive interviews with men who were on board the Glomar Explorer and the USS Halibut, the submarine that found the wreckage, as well as with U.S. naval intelligence officers and with Soviet naval officers and scientists. The authors had access to the Glomar Explorer’s logs and to other documents from U.S. and Soviet sources. The book is based, in part, on the research for Michael White's ground-breaking documentary film,Azorian: The Raising of the K-129, released in late 2009. As a result of the research for the book and the documentary film, the CIA reluctantly issued a report on Project Azorian in early 2010, even though they tried to withhold details that were in that brief document from the public record by redacting one-third of it. In this book, the story of the CIA’s Project Azorian is finally revealed after decades of secrecy.

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This is the most comprehensive, English-language study of the German Imperial Navy’s battlecruisers that served in the First World War. Known as Panzerkreuzer, literally “armored cruiser,” the eight ships of the class were to be involved in several early North Sea skirmishes before the great pitched battle of Jutland where they inflicted devastating damage on the Royal Navy’s battlecruiser fleet. This book details their design and construction, and traces the full service history of each ship, recounting their actions, drawing largely from first-hand German sources and official documents, many previously unpublished in English.

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A great power arms race in naval weaponry and platforms, rising challengers seeking to overturn the existing international order in Asia, an economic slump that put immense pressure on politicians in democracies to trim defense budgets, and diplomatic efforts by statesmen to find ways to promote mutual security and avoid rivalries that could lead to war—all these features mark the current-day strategic environment. These features also marked in the era between the two world wars. To prevent the naval rivalries that augured international conflict, statesmen and naval leaders sought to negotiate arms control agreement. Their efforts to avert a great power naval arms race were crowned with achievement at the London Conference of 1930.What was accomplished at London, of course, did not prove lasting; nor did it lead to additional meaningful arms control and prevent future wars. Instead, London proved a dead end in the evolution of interwar international relations. The London Treaty marked the high point of interwar arms control. When measured against the magnitude of the international catastrophe that would unfold over the next decade, this achievement in arms control now appears practically meaningless at best and dangerous at worst. Critics of interwar arms control argue that, by weakening of American and British naval power, as well as stirring up extremist nationalism in Japanese internal politics, the London agreement represents a case study in political folly that contributed to the awful events leading to the war. The London Conference of 1930 thus represents a watershed, a turning point in the history of the interwar period.In this volume, leading naval historians tackle the question of how to assess the role played by naval arms control in the history of the interwar period. In addressing this important question, the authors uncover new evidence about the role of intelligence and behind-the-scenes political deal making that adds much to our knowledge of the international and naval history of this important era. This volume’s authors provide the first complete account of the strategic calculations and negotiations that shaped the outcome at the London Conference. No one interested in twentieth-century naval history, international relations and the rivalries of rising and declining great powers, and the origins of the Second World War can afford to miss this important new history.

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Rare among books on weapon systems technologies, this work traces China s development from a coastal defense force of obsolete ships with crude weapons to its current complex missile catamarans and Aegis-like destroyers with vertical launch weapons and long-range cruise missiles. As the only book devoted solely to all combat systems on Chinese warships, it is a convenient one-stop reference filled with tables that break down specifications and parameters into specific areas, such as sensors and weapons for specific hulls. The book is divided into sections on frigates, destroyers, submarines, patrol craft, and aircraft. Antisubmarine, anti-air, anti-surface, and mine warfare are covered separately. For war gamers, there are tables with frequencies, load outs, and ranges. The authors prompt readers to discern areas of weakness and strength in the Chinese combat systems.

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Hanson W. Baldwin was America's best-known military writer and analyst in the 20th Century covering conflicts from World War II to the Vietnam War. He was the military editor of the New York Times for forty years and his dispatches from Guadalcanal and the Western Pacific won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1943.This first biography of this Naval Academy graduate begins with an appreciation of the human and literary values learned from his Baltimore newspaper family. His midshipman years, 1920-1924, taught him the value of concentration. After three years of active service, he chose the life of a professional writer. A few days before the 1929 stock market crash, he joined the New York Times as a reporter. His career was advanced by the patronage of the Times publisher and by the talk of another European war in 1937. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for his Guadalcanal series. After 1945, he thought the atomic bomb to be of limited use on the battlefield as well as in the politics of the Cold War. His news scoops upset many but were in keeping with his determination to tell his readers what its government was doing. His continuing criticism of Secretary McNamara's management of the Vietnam War and the Times management's annoyance with his pro-war position contributed to his decision to retire in March 1968. Later, he could only observe and to complain over the decline of American values and its harmful effects on the military. After his retirement he continued to write articles on military affairs for the news columns and Op-Ed page of the New York Times.

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Now in its second edition, Leadership Embodied is an instructive collection of short biographical essays focusing on Navy and Marine Corps personnel, who have demonstrated notable leadership characteristics. While leaders are present in every aspect of human undertaking, leadership in this work is illustrated through the most dramatic and demanding of all human undertakings—war and the preparations for war. Wartime challenges are, because of the life and death nature of the affair, more monumental and exacting. All of these individuals have been selected because they dramatically shaped today’s institutions, practices, and customs within the naval services. The contributions of these individuals should be required reading for any student of leadership because they each demonstrate a particular lesson for midshipmen on their journey to becoming a navy or Marine Corps officer.

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This new work features the fresh thinking of twenty-eight leading authors from a variety of military and national security disciplines. Following an introduction by Lt. Gen. James Dubik, Commander I Corps, U.S. Army, and an opening essay titled «State of the Question» by Dr. Colin Gray, the anthology first considers the general question of «An American Way of War?» Sections on operational art, with writers addressing the issues in both conventional and small wars; stability and reconstruction; and intelligence complete the volume. Among the well-known contributors are Fred Kagan, Ralph Peters, Harlan Ullman, and Milan Vego. This collection of essays is the outcome of a seminar series sponsored by the Office of Force Transformation and the U.S. Navy to examine the future of warfare and the underlying principles of war and to educate future military strategists and leaders on these principles. Footnotes, index, and a bibliographic essay make the work a useful tool for students of war and general readers alike.

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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.

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