(Part 3) 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.

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

If anybody want to read a really good book about discovering U boats, the book Shadow Divers is a seriously amazing read. A couple guys found a wreck nobody knew about at the time and started diving it for months on end in something like 200 feet of water.


EDIT: they dove on it for 6 years and it was about 230 feet.

If you haven't read it, "Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil", is a fascinating, if somewhat dry, account of how we were able to project our power across the Pacific. Hopefully our current strategists and logisticians have reread it a few times.

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.

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

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.

i got that information from this excellent book

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

Great fictional story featuring the Mighty T.

You should read The Rickover Effect if this stuff interests you, if you haven't yet.

The Rules Of The Game: Jutland And British Naval Command is a fine study of the battle, but it takes a very long detour into the evolution of 19th–century Royal Navy doctrine and personnel policy, which may or may not be up your alley.

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

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.

The Frobisher account comes from this,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Confident-Hope-Miracle-History-Spanish/dp/0552149756/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420536760&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Spanish+Armada

I'd happily give you the page number for the joy of rereading the account but don't have my copy of that book to hand. It's on a shelf in another house in another country.

The Nelson one goes back further and deeper, I can't remember where I read it, a old book, blue or black hard cover, bought from a a second hand book shop, probably in Camberwell south London in the mid 1990's.

So the story goes,

Nelson was chasing someone.

"Put her over more," he said.

"No my Lord," replied the helmsman. (If Nelson was getting the "my Lord," his career must have been advanced.)

Nelson paced his deck and came back,

"Put her over more."

"No my Lord," came the reply

He paced his deck again.

"Put her over more."

"No my Lord."

"I tell you she can take it, put her over more."

"No my Lord."

"Are you calling me a liar? She can take it"

"No my Lord."

I think it says something very interesting that at this point Nelson retired to his cabin

It reminds me of Lientenant-Gerneral Carton de Wiart who armed himself with a walking stick rather than a revolver for fear of shooting his own people if he lost his temper.

You'll find that in the last paragraph of page 69 of this,

http://www.bookdepository.com/Happy-Odyssey-Adrian-Carton-de-Sir-Wiart/9781844155392

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.