The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898–1945 examines how the United States became a military superpower through the use of amphibious operations. While other major world powers pursued and embraced different weapons and technologies to create different means of waging war, the United States was one of the few countries that spent decades training, developing, and employing amphibious warfare to pursue its national interests.Commonly seen as dangerous and costly, amphibious warfare was carefully modernized, refined, and promoted within American political and military circles for years by a small motley group of military mavericks, intellectuals, innovators, and crackpots. This generational cast of underdogs and unlikely heroes were able to do the impossible by predicting and convincing America’s leadership how the United States should fight World War II.David Nasca reveals that despite the new ways that states have to project military power today as seen with airpower, nuclear weapons, cyber warfare, and special operators, amphibious warfare has proven to be the most important element in transforming the theater of battle. In understanding how amphibious warfare allowed the United States to achieve geopolitical supremacy, competitor states are now looking at America’s amphibious past for clues in how to challenge the United States’ global leadership and expand its power and influence in the world.

Few Marines have had more impact on the Corps's history than Pete Ellis, and none have been more controversial. This biography of the brilliant yet troubled Marine disputes many long-accepted but unsubstantiated accounts of his life and death. Ellis's legacy as the father of amphibious warfare is fully examined by the authors, who searched through family papers, fitness reports, Japanese sources, and interviewed eyewitnesses to solve the mysteries of Ellis's tragic life.

Learning War examines the U.S. Navy’s doctrinal development from 1898–1945 and explains why the Navy in that era was so successful as an organization at fostering innovation. A revolutionary study of one of history’s greatest success stories, this book draws profoundly important conclusions that give new insight, not only into how the Navy succeeded in becoming the best naval force in the world, but also into how modern organizations can exploit today’s rapid technological and social changes in their pursuit of success. Trent Hone argues that the Navy created a sophisticated learning system in the early years of the twentieth century that led to repeated innovations in the development of surface warfare tactics and doctrine. The conditions that allowed these innovations to emerge are analyzed through a consideration of the Navy as a complex adaptive system. Learning War is the first major work to apply this complex learning approach to military history. This approach permits a richer understanding of the mechanisms that enable human organizations to evolve, innovate, and learn, and it offers new insights into the history of the United States Navy.

Highly illustrated, Amphibious Warfare takes the reader through the different stages of an amphibious campaign chapter by chapter, illustrating each with case studies from the last 100 years.

Warship Builders is the first scholarly study of the U.S. naval shipbuilding industry from the early 1920s to the end of World War II, when American shipyards produced the world's largest fleet that helped defeat the Axis powers in all corners of the globe. A colossal endeavor that absorbed billions and employed virtual armies of skilled workers, naval construction mobilized the nation's leading industrial enterprises in the shipbuilding, engineering, and steel industries to deliver warships whose technical complexity dwarfed that of any other weapons platform. Based on systematic comparisons with British, Japanese, and German naval construction, Thomas Heinrich pinpoints the distinct features of American shipbuilding methods, technology development, and management practices that enabled U.S. yards to vastly outproduce their foreign counterparts. Throughout the book, comparative analyses reveal differences and similarities in American, British, Japanese, and German naval construction. Heinrich shows that U.S. and German shipyards introduced electric arc welding and prefabrication methods to a far greater extent than their British and Japanese counterparts between the wars, laying the groundwork for their impressive production records in World War II. While the American and Japanese navies relied heavily on government-owned navy yards, the British and German navies had most of their combatants built in corporately-owned yards, contradicting the widespread notion that only U.S. industrial mobilization depended on private enterprise. Lastly, the U.S. government's investments into shipbuilding facilities in both private and government-owned shipyards dwarfed the sums British, Japanese, and German counterparts expended. This enabled American builders to deliver a vast fleet that played a pivotal role in global naval combat.

Americans think of the Korean War as death and hardship in the bitter hills of Korea. It was certainly this, and for those who fought this is what they generally saw. Yet every foot of the struggles forward, every step of the retreats, the overwhelming victories, the withdrawals and last ditch stands had their seagoing support and overtones. The spectacular ones depended wholly on amphibious power -- the capability of the twentieth century scientific Navy to overwhelm land-bound forces at the point of contact. Yet the all pervading influence of the sea was present even when no major landing or retirement or reinforcement highlighted its effect. When navies clash in gigantic battle or hurl troops ashore under irresistible concentration of ship-borne guns and planes, nations understand that sea power is working. It is not so easy to understand that this tremendous force may effect its will silently, steadily, irresistibly even though no battles occur. No clearer example exists of this truth in wars dark record than in Korea. Communist-controlled North Korea had slight power at sea except for Soviet mines. So beyond this strong underwater phase the United States Navy and allies had little opposition on the water. It is, therefore, easy to fail to recognize the decisive role navies played in this war fought without large naval battles.

The planning that allowed for the successful amphibious landings at the end of World War II actually began during the 1880s as the Marine Corps sought to define its role in the new Steel Navy. Officers braved skepticism, indifference and outright opposition to develop an amphibious warfare doctrine, with each service contributing. From the 1898 war with Spain through the disastrous 1915 Australian landing to the successful World War II assaults in the Pacific and northwest France, this chronological history explores the successes and failures pivotal to the concept of amphibious warfare through the lives and careers of fourteen officers instrumental to its development. Profiles include General George S. Patton, Jr.; Rear Admiral Walter C. Ansel, USN; Lieutenant General John A. Lejeune, USMC; Admiral William Sims, USN; and Colonel Robert W. Huntington, USMC.