Battleship Sailors

Vigorous and highly readable, this portrait of the enlisted man's life aboard the U.S. battleship California depicts the devastation at Pearl Harbor from the hazardous vantage point of the open "birdbath" atop the mainmast.

'The deck and the bridge were pointing to the sky at an alarming angle and our thoughts were to get the devil out of it and into the water. Almost in unison we shouted "for God's sake jump boys".' Citizen Sailors is a groundbreaking people's history of the Royal Navy in the Second World War. Drawing on hundreds of contemporary diaries and letters, along with memoirs, oral history and official documents, Glyn Prysor tells the human story of Britain's war at sea. The sailors of the Royal Navy fought from the very first day of the war until the very last. They played a vital part in a truly global war, from America to Australia and from the Arctic to South Africa. They fought in every conceivable vessel: vast aircraft carriers and cramped corvettes, fast motor boats and rickety minesweepers, Swordfish biplanes and ageing submarines. Seen through the eyes of sailors themselves, this is a compelling account of life in the wartime Royal Navy: humanity and horror, triumphs and tragedies, nerve-wracking convoys and epic gun battles, devastating aerial bombardment and swashbuckling amphibious landings. Citizen Sailors puts the Royal Navy and its sailors back at the heart of the story of Britain's Second World War.

Beginning with a pictorial essay on battleship construction in the 1930s and 1940s, this new book looks at the various design facets of the last great capital ships of the world's navies. Kaplan offers us a glimpse into those massive American and German navy yards and construction facilities that were put to use during this time, acquainting us with the arenas in which these final examples of battleship technology were laid down, built up, launched, fitted out, commissioned and taken out to sea. The book roots itself in a period of monumental change within the history of contemporary warfare. With the baton being passed from the battleship community to that of the aircraft carrier, the iconic battleship was gradually superseded by a new and even more threatening weapons system. It was destined to be consigned to the history books, whilst newer, slicker and more efficient fighting machines took precedence. This publication serves as a tribute to a lost legend of naval warfare. There is a look at some of modern history's most significant battleships, relaying their thrilling stories, defining characteristics and eventual fates. Ships featured include Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Warspite, Tirpitz and Yamato. The book is completed with 'Fast and Last', a visit on board the four final examples of battleship technology and design, the last serving battleships USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, USS Wisconsin, and USS Missouri. Their Second World War careers are recounted, as are the qualities that made them special.

The KINO Russian Cinema series has been expanding to provide students and general readers with readable, companion handbooks to important and interesting films of Russian cinema from its beginnings to the late 1990s. This volume investigates the production, context and reception of the film "Battleship Potemkin", the people who made it, and the film itself, including its place in Russian and World cinema.

Honorable Mention, 2016 Lyman Awards, presented by the North American Society for Oceanic History This book is a thrillingly-written story of naval planes, boats, and submarines during World War I. When the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, America’s sailors were immediately forced to engage in the utterly new realm of anti-submarine warfare waged on, below and above the seas by a variety of small ships and the new technology of airpower. The U.S. Navy substantially contributed to the safe trans-Atlantic passage of a two million man Army that decisively turned the tide of battle on the Western Front even as its battleship division helped the Royal Navy dominate the North Sea. Thoroughly professionalized, the Navy of 1917–18 laid the foundations for victory at sea twenty-five years later.

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.