A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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...

(C) 1984 U.S. Naval Institute Press In 1984, the Naval Institute Press published “The Hunt for Red October,” Tom Clancy’s Cold War-era novel about a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, Jack Ryan, who leads a group of Anglo-American naval officers on a classified mission in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. Their task: to assist 26 disenchanted Soviet Navy officers commanded by Captain First Rank Marko Ramius in a mass defection to the West – and take possession of the Red Navy’s newest ballistic missile submarine. Clancy, who at the time owned a successful insurance agency in Maryland, was one of the first writers to have a work of fiction published by the Naval Institute Press. The Annapolis-based publishing arm of the U.S. Naval Institute is best known for non-fiction books and reference guides about the military – with a special focus on naval warfare, technology, and history. In 1984, when Clancy submitted his manuscript for “The Hunt for Red October” to the Pr...