The U.S. Navy Against the Axis: Surface Combat, 1941-1945

Front Cover
Naval Institute Press, 2007 - History - 364 pages
The U.S. Navy against the Axis tells the story of the U.S. Navy's surface fleet in World War II with an emphasis on ship-to-ship combat. The book refutes the widely-held notion that the attack on Pearl Harbor rendered battleships obsolete and that aviation and submarines dominated the Pacific War. It demonstrates how the surface fleet played a decisive role at critical junctures. It was crucial to America's ultimate victory and its story holds many lessons for today's Navy and the nation as a whole.

The U.S. Navy against the Axis describes how swift adaptability and intellectual honesty were fundamental to the Navy's success against Japan. The underlying premise is that the nation cannot assume that in a conflict against conventional or asymmetric enemies, it holds title to the same virtues the Navy demonstrated three generations ago. Instead those lessons need to be constantly studied and affirmed in the face of postwar mythologies, lest they be forgotten.

From inside the book

Contents

The East Indies II
45
17
86
Guadalcanal November 1942
99
Copyright

4 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2007)

VINCENT P. O'HARA is an independent scholar and the author of eleven books and many articles. He is the Naval Institute Press 2015 Author of the Year for his most recent work, Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory. O'Hara holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Chula Vista, California.

Bibliographic information