(Part 2) Top products from r/WarshipPorn

Probably the best academic historian turning his hand to popular naval history that I have come across is NAM Rodger. I would thoroughly recommend:

• The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, Vol 1: 660-1649
  
  
• The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, Vol II: 1649-1815
  
  These two balance clear campaign, social, political and technological histories, with as many tables, data, original sources and other appendices as you could desire. Vol III is on its way.
  
  
• The Wooden World: Anatomy of the Georgian Navy
  
  An astonishing social dissection of the lives of those on a Navy warship and how they worked together in the century before the Napoleonic era. His take on discipline (rum, sodomy and the lash = a load of bollocks, a crew is only effective if it works on mutual respect and consent) and naval provisioning (naval food was often better than the working classes could get on land, and the care and logistics involved were massive) are revelatory.
  
  Edit:
  
  What I would really like is a follow up to Wooden World. He hints at significant differences in social and disciplinary relationships between the era covered and the subsequent "classic" Napoleonic era. Again in Command of the Ocean he also refers to major changes from the Napoleonic into the Victorian era, with a much more class-based command and disciplinary structure based less on merit and consent and more on the idea that certain Britons were born to command, the idea of an officer class. Hopefully Vol III will cover this.
  
  Edit 2: Fixed shitty wording.

If you're interested in knowing more, there is a neat little book entitled Lake Michigan's Aircraft Carriers that has all of these pictures (except the color one), plus another 50 at least.

It's probably the best extant history of the world's only freshwater paddlewheel carriers. This article is probably the second best.

Yep, as late as the 19 century, the European Great Powers who had huge fleets still paid tribute to the pirates, this was ended by the US who basically created the Navy in order to fight them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars

I suupose the Order recieved donations since it was a religious Order. About books, I don't know, but this is a great book on the pirates and gives some great info on the subject

http://www.amazon.com/The-History-Piracy-Dover-Maritime/dp/0486461831

Harold Buell, a Dauntless/Helldiver pilot, was on the Saratoga and he liked to "count" Saratoga as being present at the battle because IIRC some of its air elements patrolled after the retreating Japanese. He was the author of "Dauntless Helldivers", which is a pretty good book. On a more trivial note, he's the grandfather of the actress Liv Tyler.

If you haven't read the book, I'd highly recommend it. Also, the book's author, Lothar-Günther Buchheim, was a journalist / artist who served on a u-boat and his photographs were collected in a very interesting book.

The story of Halibut is included in the excellent Blind Man's Bluff.

This reminds me of one of my favorite books growing up: "Weapons" from the Diagram Group.

http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-International-Encyclopedia-From-5000/dp/0312039506

My area is mostly interwar disarmament, the Washington conference in particular. Two of my favourites on this topic are: Britain, America, and Arms control 1921-1937 by Christopher Hall and Towards a New Order of Sea Power by Harold and Margaret Sprout. If anyone wants to read up on the Washington conference, these two should be the place to start.

There is also a VERY interesting piece by John Ferris about the 1920s (entitled 'The Last Decade of British Maritime Supremacy') in Far Flung Lines, edited by Keith Nielson and Greg Kennedy.

I have a book recommendation for you: Command and Control

It's a superb read regarding a series of briefs on nuclear weapon safety in fire conditions, and how safe modern weapons are in comparison.

You might enjoy this book.

Huh. I read this in Arthur Herman's To Rule the Waves. Good overview history, but I do wonder about the accuracy of some points that he makes.

Great fictional story featuring the Mighty T.

i got that information from this excellent book

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Destroyer-Captain-Tameichi-Hara/dp/034531767X

Ooh, I've got a negative to add: SSN by Tom Clancy. One of the most insultingly-badly written books I've seen. I won't go into detail why, just read the reviews on Amazon if you're curious.

Found!

It was weirdly hard to find the title translation...

WWIII was dangerously close during the Cuban Missile Crisis thanks to nuclear torpedos:

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/25/you-and-almost-everyone-you-know-owe-your-life-to-this-man/

https://www.amazon.com/Red-November-Inside-U-S-Soviet-Submarine/dp/0061806773

I have one similar called Modern Air Combat It is extremely worn but I flip through it from time to time to get a bit of Cold War nostalgia. I used to have the book that OP posted but I lost it some time ago.

Source - wikimedia

Unfortunately, she was sunk less than 3 months later (1st Naval Battle of Guadalcanal) after an extremely close encounter with Japanese Battleship Hiei (which she mercilessly strafed with machine guns) and a long-lance torpedo from a destroyer.

this book has pictures not only of Laffey's wreck but also plenty of other ships lost during the struggle for Guadalcanal.

There were a lot of shell problems.

The Last Battle Station, by Duane Schultz, discusses the ammo issue aboard the USS Houston. Near the start of the war, the West Coast Fleet Gunnery School (probably at San Diego) test fired a batch of ammo and found it defective:

> Although the crew had drilled hundreds of times on the technique of firing their five-inch guns, the first opportunity they would have to actually fire them would be at war, against the enemy. Further, only four people aboard the Houston knew that the ammunition for those five-inch guns, the prime defense against air attack, was faulty....

> They requested permission to test-fire the ammunition to find out if they were as bad as reported by the gunnery school. Request denied. For reasons of morale, (Captain Albert H.) Rooks, (Lt. Cmdr. Arthur L.) Maher, (Air Defense Officer Jack) Galbraith, and (chief enlisted man, Gunner James E.) Hogan agreed to keep the information to themselves.

Granted, that's 5-inch ammunition. But we know the Mark 14 torpedo also had issues, so it's not really a surprise to hear there were issues with large caliber shells.

The Houston story is another story entirely. That ship was doomed even before the war began.