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Battleship at War: The Epic Story of the U.S.S. Washington
Battleship at War The Epic Story of the USS Washington Author:Ivan Musicant In late March 1942 the U.S.S. Washington steamed east from Casco Bay, Maine, across the treacherous North Atlantic to Scapa Flow, Scotland. Part of a U.S. Navy task force, her mission was to escort ships carrying supplies through sub-infested northern seas to Russia. — Washington's service on the hazardous Murmansk run inaugurated an illustri... more »ous career in which she took part in every major naval battle in the Pacific. At Guadalcanal she fought and won a classic ship-to-ship duel with the Japanese battleship Kirishima, becoming the first U.S. battleship to fight an enemy battleship and the only one to singly destroy one. In 1944 Washington's batteries picked off enemy planes in an action that came to be called the Marianas Turkey Shoot. And during the U.S. drive across the Pacific, her massive guns pounded the enemy during U.S. Marine landings on Kwajalein, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. She carried troops home from Europe after the war and in 1947 retired, a mere seven years after she was launched.
But Battleship at War is much more than a history of warfare at sea. Skillfully interweaving the narrative with deck logs, interviews, letters, and diaries, author Ivan Musicant also tells the personal stories of men who served on board. The account is vivid, perceptive, and blunt as admirals, captains, gunners, and boatswains recall their experiences--routine patrols where the word was "watch and wait," lively shore leaves in New York and Honolulu, perilous moments as the giant ship in jeopardy dodged torpedoes or heeled over in a typhoon.
In recreating the day-to-day life in a battleship at war, this masterful chronicle evokes the smartness and mystique of one of the most eminent battleships that ever dominated warfare at sea.« less