The Last Big Gun Naval Battle

The Battle of Leyte Gulf -- four major actions -- was the greatest sea battle in history. The Surigao Strait action is considered the Navy's greatest single triumph, a model of timing, coordination and execution. This is a unique, behind-the- guns view; a gripping eye-witness account riding the battle line at Surigao in the last Crossing of the 'T'.

This naval history of WWII explores the advancing technology and tactics of battleships through a fascinating survey of ship-to-ship duels. While many naval battles of the Second World War were decided by the torpedo or the aerial bomb, there was a surprising number of traditional ship-to-ship engagements involving the big guns of battleships and cruisers. Big Gun Battles recounts some of the most significant and technically fascinating of these gunfire duels in a narrative that combines lively storytelling with an in-depth understanding of the factors influencing victory or defeat. Covering all theatres of the naval war from 1939 until the Japanese surrender, the selected incidents demonstrate the changing face of surface warfare under the influence of rapidly improving fire-control systems, radar, and other technologies. By 1945, battleships achieved the pinnacle of gunnery excellence.

Often overshadowed by other Pacific War engagements such as Midway or Guadalcanal, the Battle of Leyte Gulf was characterized by some of the most gallant hours in seagoing history: the U.S. Navy's defeat of the combined Japanese fleet during the invasion of the Philippines in October 1944. Involving more ships than even the gargantuan First World War Battle of Jutland and two hundred thousand men, it was the biggest naval battle in world history. It marked the last time that huge capital ships fought within sight and sound of each other. Using the personal accounts of the men who were there, Sears tells this mammoth and compelling story. This moving tale uses personal accounts of the veterans who achieved victory in the biggest and last great naval battle, largely fought with aging ships, untested reserve crews, and teenaged combat aircraft pilots. Often overshadowed by other Pacific War engagements such as Midway or Guadalcanal, the Battle of Leyte Gulf was characterized by some of the most gallant hours in seagoing history: the U.S. Navy's defeat of the combined Japanese fleet during the invasion of the Philippines in October 1944. Involving more ships than even the gargantuan First World War Battle of Jutland and two hundred thousand men, it was the biggest naval battle in world history. It marked the last time huge capital ships fought within sight and sound of each other. Using the personal accounts of the men who were there, Sears tells this mammoth and compelling story. The Battle of Leyte Gulf could have been the Pacific War's Battle of the Bulge. In a space of 12 hours, Japan, a beaten, cornered enemy, was able to devise and execute a strategy that very nearly pierced the heart of America's war machine. The real margin of victory would come from surprising quarters: from aging ships risen from the graveyard of the war's infamous first day; from small, hastily constructed ships with largely untested reserve crews; from fragile support ships never intended to be anywhere near battles of this scale; and from combat aircraft piloted by teenagers.

Describes the broad span of naval history from the Battle of Sluys in 1340 to the Battle of Midway in the 1900s.

The major naval powers—Britain, America, Russia, and Japan—have all played a part in the theater of war at sea over the last one hundred years. Naval fighting has always been a rapidly developing affair, and in no century have changes been so swift and fundamental. In 1905, when this book begins, the first major engagement between ironclad fleets—the Battle of Tsu-Shima—took place in the Far East and decided the outcome of the Russo-Japanese war in Japan’s favor. What follows are the mighty sea battles of our century, graphically reconstructed for the reader. Victories, defeats, and mutinies at sea, from the battle with the Bismarck to the battles of Midway and Guadalcanal.

As she lay in dry dock, devastatingly damaged by one of Hitler’s newly deployed magnetic mines after barely two months in service, few could have predicted the illustrious career that lay ahead for the cruiser HMS Belfast. After three years of repairs to her broken keel, engine- and boiler-rooms, and extensive refitting, she would go on to play a critical role in the protection of the Arctic Convoys, would fire one of the opening shots at D-Day and continue supporting the Operation Overlord landings for five weeks. Her service continued beyond the Second World War both in Korea and in the Far East before she commenced her life as one of the world’s most celebrated preserved visitor ships in the Pool of London. Her crowning glory however came in December 1943 when, equipped with the latest radar technology, she was to play the leading role in the Battle of the North Cape sinking the feared German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, the bête noir of the Royal Navy. In doing so the ship’s crew made a vital contribution to, what was to be, the final big-gun head-to-head action to be fought at sea. In The Last Big Gun Brian Lavery, the foremost historian of the Royal Navy, employs his trademark wide-ranging narrative style and uses the microcosm of the ship to tell the wider story of the naval war at sea and vividly portray the realities for all of life aboard a Second World War battleship. The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs and illustrations and will appeal to all those with an interest in military history and life in the wartime Royal Navy. • The illustrious survivor of the last big-gun head-to-head ‘broadside’ engagement at sea • The very first complete ‘biography’ of HMS Belfast • Exhaustively researched from primary sources and interviews and written in the matchless narrative style of the award-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author Brian Lavery • An original work of popular history juxtaposing an in-depth technical understanding with an highly evocative use of quote and anecdote

Includes 6 charts and 20 photos Pulitzer prize winning author C. Vann Woodward recounts the story of the largest naval battle of all time. “The Battle for Leyte Gulf was the greatest naval battle of the Second World War and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas. It was composed of four separate yet closely interrelated actions, each of which involved forces comparable in size with those engaged in any previous battle of the Pacific War. The four battles, two of them fought simultaneously, were joined in three different bodies of water separated by as much as 500 miles. Yet all four were fought between dawn of one day and dusk of the next, and all were waged in the repulse of a single, huge Japanese operation. “They were guided by a master plan drawn up in Tokyo two months before our landing and known by the code name Sho Plan. It was a bold and complicated plan calling for reckless sacrifice and the use of cleverly conceived diversion. As an afterthought the suicidal Kamikaze campaign was inaugurated in connection with the plan. Altogether the operation was the most desperate attempted by any naval power during the war-and there were moments, several of them in fact, when it seemed to be approaching dangerously near to success. “Unlike the majority of Pacific naval battles that preceded it, the Battle of Leyte Gulf was not limited to an exchange of air strikes between widely separated carrier forces, although it involved action of that kind. It also included surface and subsurface action between virtually all types of fighting craft from motor torpedo boats to battleships, at ranges varying from point-blank to fifteen miles, with weapons ranging from machine guns to great rifles of 18-inch bore, fired “in anger” by the Japanese for the first time in this battle.”

From thunderous broadsides traded between wooden sailing ships on Lake Erie, to the carrier battles of World War II, to the devastating high-tech action in the Persian Gulf, here is a gripping history of five key battles that defined the evolution of naval warfare--and the course of the American nation. Acclaimed military historian Craig Symonds offers spellbinding narratives of crucial engagements, showing how each battle reveals the transformation of technology and weaponry from one war to the next; how these in turn transformed naval combat; and how each event marked a milestone in American history. - Oliver Hazard Perry's heroic victory at Lake Erie, one of the last great battles of the Age of Sail, which secured the Northwestern frontier for the United States - The brutal Civil War duel between the ironclads Monitor and Virginia, which sounded the death knell for wooden-hulled warships and doomed the Confederacy's hope of besting the Union navy - Commodore Dewey's stunning triumph at Manila Bay in 1898, where the U.S. displayed its "new navy" of steel-hulled ships firing explosive shells and wrested an empire from a fading European power - The hairsbreadth American victory at Midway, where aircraft carriers launched planes against enemies 200 miles away--and where the tide of World War II turned in the space of a few furious minutes - Operation Praying Mantis in the Persian Gulf, where computers, ship-fired missiles, and "smart bombs" not only changed the nature of warfare at sea, but also marked a new era, and a new responsibility, for the United States. Symonds records these encounters in detail so vivid that readers can hear the wind in the rigging and feel the pounding of the guns. Yet he places every battle in a wide perspective, revealing their significance to America's development as it grew from a new Republic on the edge of a threatening frontier to a global superpower. Decision at Sea is a powerful and illuminating look at pivotal moments in the history of the Navy and of the United States. It is also a compelling study of the unchanging demands of leadership at sea, where commanders must make rapid decisions in the heat of battle with lives--and the fate of nations--hanging in the balance.