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Showing posts with the label Clay Blair Jr.

Book Review: 'Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan'

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Cover art by Thomas Hart Benton.© 2001 Naval Institute Press The diesel-electric powered submarine was one of the deadliest weapons used in naval warfare during the two World Wars. During both wars in the Atlantic, Germany's U-boats did extensive damage to Allied shipping and twice threatened to starve Britain. After December 7, 1941, during the campaigns in the Pacific, the Japanese submarine force, tied to a rigid doctrine of stalking enemy capital ships, scored a few outstanding kills of carriers and the USS Indianapolis but did little to harm Allied cargo ships. In Clay Blair, Jr.'s Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan, reissued by the U.S. Naval Institute (the same publishing company that gave readers Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October  novel) after several decades of being out of print, is a fascinating and detailed look at the officers, sailors and submarines of the Silent Service and their nearly four-year-long campaign against Japan'