"Richard Hough recounts the fleet's extraordinary seven-month journey from the Baltic to the Far East, which eventually became a mission of heroic futility when Port Arthur, and with it the entire Russian Pacific Fleet, fell. As Admiral Rozhestvensky's fleet lumbered through the Straits of Tsushima towards Vladivostok on 27 May 1905, the Japanese, in one of the most crushing naval victories of all time, utterly destroyed the Russian armada. The humiliating and total defeat of Russia was confirmed, giving rise to a new and dynamic superpower in the East."--BOOK JACKET.

Aimed at the general reader with an interest in World War II and the U.S. Navy, this book looks at the massive salvage effort that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, beginning with the damage control efforts aboard the sinking and damaged ships in the harbor on 7 December 1941 and ending in March 1944 when salvage efforts on the USS Utah were finally abandoned. Dan Madsen describes the Navy's dramatic race to clear the harbor and repair as many ships as possible so they could return to the fleet ready for war. Numerous photographs, many never before published in books for the general public, give readers a real appreciation for the momentous task involved, from the raising of the USS Oglala in 1942 and the USS Oklahoma in 1943 to the eventual dismantling of the above-water portions of the USS Arizona.

Japan was closed to the world until 1854 and its technology then was literally medieval. Great Britain, France and Russia divided the globe in the nineteenth century, but Japan was catching up. Its army and navy were retrained by Western powers and equipped with the latest weapons and ships. Japan wanted to further emulate its European mentors and establish a protectorate over Korea, yet Japanese efforts were blocked by Imperial Russia who had their own designs on the peninsula. The Russo-Japanese War started with a surprise Japanese naval attack against an anchored enemy fleet still believing itself at peace. It ended with the Battle of Tsushima, the most decisive surface naval battle of the 20th century. This gripping study describes this pivotal battle, and shows how the Japanese victory over Russia led to the development of the dreadnought battleship, and gave rise to an almost mythical belief in Japanese naval invincibility.