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Submarines
In 1942, over a quarter of a million ordinary citizens volunteered to help defend our country as Nazi submarines terrorized the East Coast and Caribbean waters, sinking fuel tankers and cargo ships with near impunity.
In the early 1950s, top-secret efforts led to the first submarine trips to the North Pole by USS Nautilus and USS Skate in 1957 – dramatic successes that rivaled the Soviet Union's Sputnik that year – and shifted the balance of strategic power.
When the first African-Americans to crew a U.S. warship sailed into the war-tossed North Atlantic, they couldn't have known it would take 50 years to gain honor in their own country.
I sometimes felt like I was swimming against a very strong tide when doing research for my book on the men of the USS Mason. Very few people had ever heard of the first ship in the U.S. Navy manned by African-American sailors.
As Richard Snow rightly suggests in the subtitle to his compelling book, the Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and certainly one of the most consequential campaigns of the Second World War, if not in world history.
Those who watched from the pier knew the emotions usual at sailings. They felt the initial pain of separation as the gangplanks dropped away and the first feet of clearing water divided them from those who were departing.
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR SUBMARINE
One night in early September, 1776 in New York Harbor, a small vessel called the Turtle made the world’s first submarine attack on a warship. The pilot, Ezra Lee, was a sergeant in the Continental Army.
His job was to destroy German submarines. To do it, they gave him 12 men, three machine guns, four depth charges, and an old wooden fishing schooner with an engine that literally drove mechanics mad.
On July 6, 1942, I was standing on the fantail of the mine-sweeper Fulmar off Portland, Maine when the signal tower started blinking away. By the time I could get to the bridge, the message had already been typed up.
The U.S. Navy’s first submarine was scrapped half a century ago. But now we have been given a second chance to visit a boat nobody ever expected to see again.
IN 1930 THE United States Navy’s first submarine was hauled away from the Bronx park where it had long been on display and was knocked into scrap by a salvage company that had paid one hundred dollars for the privilege.
An Interview With Edward L. Beach, the captain who first took a submarine around the world underwater looks at the U.S. Navy past and present and tells us what we must learn from the Falklands war
Naval power … is the natural defense of the United States,” said John Adams, who more than any other man deserves to be called the father of the American Navy.
Coming on Line
From the beginning it was clear—in this case the beginning was December 2, 1942, the day the first man-made nuclear reactor was nudged to criticality in a squash court beneath the west stands of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field and incidentally the first day of wartime g
A SUBMARINE COMMANDER TELLS WHY WE ALMOST LOST THE PACIFIC WAR
THE LUSITANIA DISASTER: An Episode in Modern Warfare and Diplomacy
by Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan The Free Press, 306 pp. $10.95
Dauntless John Holland not only perfected the undersea boat but fought to get it accepted. Both achievements brought him only grief
Dauntless John Holland not only perfected the undersea boat but fought to get it accepted. Both achievements brought him only grief
The Confederates’ Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, but her crude design made her a coffin for her crew
The sun set in a clear sky behind Charleston the afternoon of February 17, 1864. The besieged city lay in defiant silence, watching the Federal monitors at the entrance to the harbor.
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