On Seas of Glory: Heroic Men, Great Ships, and Epic Battles of the American Navy

ISBN-13: 9780684871776 / Angielski / Miękka / 2002 / 448 str.

John F. Lehman

Opis

In On Seas of Glory, the U.S. Navy meets a storyteller worthy of its noble history. Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman gives a sweeping narrative of the service's illustrious past, from the Revolutionary War to the present day, filled with the ships that dominated the seas, equally titanic personalities, and the battles that made history.
Lehman profiles naval greats from John Paul Jones to William "Bull" Halsey, as well as the lesser-known sailors who have made the U.S. Navy the mightiest in the world, using diaries, memoirs, and letters to reveal naval combat as though firsthand. He also highlights the warships that have dominated the seas of their day and the battles in which they fought -- illustrated by detailed maps, woodcuts, paintings, and never-before-published photographs.
With this chronicle of selfless sacrifice and awesome courage on the war-swept seas around the world, Lehman reminds us that the legends chronicled in these pages were real men and women, that the navy they fought for still sails, and that today their heroism is needed more than ever.

From Ronald Reagans Secretary of the Navy comes the incredible story of that service, beginning to end. John Lehman focuses on the important ships, interesting people, and decisive battles in American naval history from the Revolutionary War to the present day.Everyone and everything in these pages is larger than life. Some of the men are legends. Lehman covers, among others, the Revolutionary Wars John Paul Jones (of "I have not yet begun to fight" fame); David Glasgow "Damn the torpedoes" Farragut of the Civil War; and the recently retired Hyman G. Rickover, the "high priest" of the nuclear submariners and his stormy, controversial relationship with Lehman himself. He also uses little-known diaries and accounts to tell the stories of the individual, uknown sailors who made it all possible. Then there are the ships: from the U.S.S. Constitution and C.S.S. Alabama to the ships of todays Navy including yesterdays nuclear-powered Nimitz supercarriers and todays superfast, high-tech Arleigh Burke destroyers just rolling off their blocks in Maines Bath Ironworks. And finally, of course, the battles, thrillingly recounted from the Battle of New Orleans to the Battle of Midway to Grenada (which is more exciting than you thought).Throughout the smoke and fire Lehman argues fiercely for the independence of the Navy and its men, and shows the services gradual evolution from ragtag smugglers and blockade-runners to true ships of the line and eventually todays ultimate ship and sailor, technically skilled, but in the same fighting tradition of his illustrious forbears.The first new single-volume history of the U. S. Navy in decades is also the most exciting ever.