Rendezvous at Midway


Book Description




Fateful Rendezvous


Book Description

Perhaps the most famous aviator of World War II, Butch O'Hare captured America's hearts and headlines in 1942 after saving the carrier Lexington in what has been called the most daring single action in the history of combat aviation - the downing of five attacking Japanese bombers. Yet the untimely and still controversial death of this Medal of Honor recipient the next year cast a shadow over O'Hare's legacy. This first full biography, written with the O'Hare family's cooperation and utilizing recently released Japanese war records, chronicles the short but eventful life of the American hero and sheds new light on his mysterious death. Seasoned naval aviation historians, the authors describe in fascinating detail O'Hare's awe-inspiring feats of aerial combat and his key role in developing tactics such as the Thach Weave and the night-fighting techniques that helped defeat the Japanese.




Black Shoe Carrier Admiral


Book Description

The revisionist work about Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, who won his battles at sea but lost the war of public opinion. A surface warrior, Fletcher led the carrier forces in the Pacific that won against all odds at Coral Sea, Midway, and the Eastern Solomon’s. Despite these successes, during the post-war Fletcher had become one of the most controversial figures in U.S. naval history and was portrayed as a timid bungler who failed to relieve Wake Island and who deliberately abandoned the Marines at Guadalcanal.




Yorktown Class Aircraft Carriers


Book Description

This fully illustrated guide offers historical context and step-by-step instruction for building and modifying US aircraft carrier models. This volume in the ShipCraft series covers the Yorktown class of American aircraft carriers. These legendary ships kept the Japanese at bay through World War II, in the dark days between Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway, where the USS Yorktown herself was lost. The USS Hornet launched the famous Doolittle Raid on Japan before being sunk at Santa Cruz in October 1942, but the USS Enterprise survived the fierce fighting of the early war years to become the US Navy's most decorated ship. This lavishly illustrated guide takes readers through a brief history of the development and careers of the Yorktown class. With its unparalleled level of visual information—including paint schemes, line drawings and photographs—it is simply the best reference for any modelmaker setting out to build one of these famous carriers.




The Battle Off Midway Island


Book Description

An account of the June, 1942, air battle between American and Japanese forces which proved a decisive defeat for the Japanese and the turning point of the war in the Pacific.




Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms


Book Description

Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms provides the first comprehensive account of what was once hailed by a leading American newspaper as the greatest spy story of World War II. This dramatic yet little-known saga, replete with telephone taps, kidnappings, and police surveillance, centres on the furtive escapades of Tyler Kent, a handsome, womanising 28-year-old Ivy League graduate, who doubles as a US Embassy code clerk and Soviet agent. Against the backdrop of London high society during the so-called Phoney War, Kent's life intersects with the lives of the book's two other memorably flamboyant protagonists. One of those is Maxwell Knight, an urbane, endearingly eccentric MI5 spyhunter. The other is Anna Wolkoff, a White Russian fashion designer and Nazi spy whose outfits are worn by the Duchess of Windsor and whose parents are friends of the British royal family. Wolkoff belongs to a fascist secret society called the Right Club, which aims to overthrow the British government. Her romantic entanglement with Tyler Kent gives her access to a secret correspondence between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, a correspondence that has the potential to transform the outcome of the war.




Miracle at Midway


Book Description

Recreates the naval battle between Japanese and American forces which was the decisive factor in the Pacific theater during World War II.




"And I was There"


Book Description

The late Admiral Layton, who was the fleet intelligence officer for Admiral Nimitz through out World War II, describes the breakdown in the intelligence process prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and shares his experiences witnessing feuding among high-level naval officers in Washington that contributed to Japan's successful attack. Black-and-wh




Radioman


Book Description

Radioman is the biography of Ray Daves, a noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Navy and an eyewitness to World War II. It is based on the author's handwritten notes from a series of interviews that began on the eighty-second birthday of the combat veteran and gives a first-person account of the world's first battles between aircraft carriers. Ray Daves grew up on a small farm near Little Rock, Arkansas. Impatient with school and the prospect of becoming a farmer like his father, he joined the CCC and went from there to the navy, where he learned to use the radio to send messages, and soon found himself in the momentary peacefulness of Pearl Harbor. Most of America's World War II veterans were not in uniform when the war began. Daves is one of the few who was. He could also tell what was happening on the bridge of the famous carrier Yorktown before it went down and of the secretive relationship between the Russian and American forces in Alaska at the time. Carol Edgemon Hipperson's discovery of this one man's inspiring story is shared with great skill and energy. A must-read for those looking for a personal, intimate account of the events of this tumultuous time in American history.




Joe Rochefort's War


Book Description

Elliot Carlson’s award-winning biography of Capt. Joe Rochefort is the first to be written about the officer who headed Station Hypo, the U.S. Navy’s signals monitoring and cryptographic intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor, and who broke the Japanese navy’s code before the Battle of Midway. The book brings Rochefort to life as the irreverent, fiercely independent, and consequential officer that he was. Readers share his frustrations as he searches in vain for Yamamoto’s fleet prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but share his joy when he succeeds in tracking the fleet in early 1942 and breaks the code that leads Rochefort to believe Yamamoto’s invasion target is Midway. His conclusions, bitterly opposed by some top Navy brass, are credited with making the U.S. victory possible and helping to change the course of the war. The author tells the story of how opponents in Washington forced Rochefort’s removal from Station Hypo and denied him the Distinguished Service Medal recommended by Admiral Nimitz. In capturing the interplay of policy and personality and the role played by politics at the highest levels of the Navy, Carlson reveals a side of the intelligence community seldom seen by outsiders. For a full understanding of the man, Carlson examines Rochefort’s love-hate relationship with cryptanalysis, his adventure-filled years in the 1930s as the right-hand man to the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet, and his return to codebreaking in mid-1941 as the officer in charge of Station Hypo. He traces Rochefort’s career from his enlistment in 1918 to his posting in Washington as head of the Navy’s codebreaking desk at age twenty-five, and beyond. In many ways a reinterpretation of Rochefort, the book makes clear the key role his codebreaking played in the outcome of Midway and the legacy he left of reporting actionable intelligence directly to the fleet. An epilogue describes efforts waged by Rochefort’s colleagues to obtain the medal denied him in 1942—a drive that finally paid off in 1986 when the medal was awarded posthumously.




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