The Ship That Wouldn't Die - The Saga of the USS Neosho A World War II Story of Courage and

Zusatztext Praise for Don Keith’s Works of Military History   “A fast-paced and well-written history.”— The Submarine Review   “Riveting…. [Keith] writes in an engaging you-are-there style calculated to bring the reader to the edge of his seat…. Battle narrative at its very best.”— Mobile Press–Register   “Breathes life into the heroic submarine’s Pacific saga…gripping.”—John Wukovits, Author of For Crew and Country and One Square Mile of Hell Informationen zum Autor Don Keith Klappentext Acclaimed naval historian Don Keith tells one of the most inspiring sea stories of World War II: the Japanese attack on the American oiler USS Neosho and the crew's struggle for survival as their slowly sinking ship drifted on the treacherous Coral Sea. May 1942: the United States closed in for the war's first major clash with the Japanese Navy. The Neosho, a vitally important but minimally armed oil tanker was ordered away from the impending battle. But as the Battle of the Coral Sea raged two hundred miles away, the Neosho was attacked, setting the ship ablaze and leaving it listing badly. Scores of sailors were killed or wounded, while hundreds bobbed in shark-infested waters. Fires on board threatened to spark a fatal explosion, and each passing hour brought the ship closer to sinking. It was the beginning of a hellish four-day ordeal as the crew struggled to stay alive and keep their ship afloat. Only four of them would survive to be rescued after nine days. Working from eyewitness accounts and declassified documents, Keith offers up vivid portraits of Navy heroes in this tale of a ship as tough and resilient as its crew. The Ship That Wouldn't Die captures the indomitable spirit of the American sailor-and finally brings to the surface one of the great untold sagas of the Pacific War. Leseprobe BOOKS BY DON KEITH PROLOGUE May 6, 1942, in the Coral Sea, between the Solomon Islands and Australia “Abandon ship! Everybody, get off the ship!” the wild-eyed, red-faced sailor yelled as he ran through the vessel’s forward compartments. “She’s goin’ down, boys, if she don’t blow up first!” Another sailor, busy passing up ammunition to the gun crew above, had no reason to doubt the truth in what his shipmate was screaming. From his station in the number one magazine—where shells were stored to feed the forward-deck gun—the barely twenty-year-old sailor could see nothing that was going on outside the hull, but could certainly feel the thuds and tremors, and heard the thunder as his big ship took vicious hits at the bow and amidships. After a morning of cruel teasing, the vessel was now catching full-bore hell from a sizable and determined swarm of Japanese dive-bombers. Though the guns on his ship were firing back, it was clear—even down here in the dark, smoke-filled magazine—that the enemy planes were homing in, inflicting what could be mortal damage. One near hit exploded in the water just on the other side of the ship’s starboard hull from where the sailor worked. The resulting shock wave almost knocked him and his buddies to the deck. The men regained their balance, and eventually their hearing, as they kept hoisting shells up to those who were manning the bow gun, doing their best to fend off their attackers. Each man working in the magazine fully expected a bomb to crash through the deck above him at any second and light off the explosive ordnance stacked all around. They also knew the likelihood of some stray spark touching off the fumes from the cargo of fuel oil they carried in the big tanks directly below their feet. The high-pitched chatter on the ship’s communications system confirmed that their vessel was taking one hell of a drubbing. Shipmates were dying. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” the man next to the sailor yelled. “If all that fuel bel...

Product details

• Authors: Don Keith
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 05.04.2016
• EAN: 9780451470010
• ISBN: 978-0-451-47001-0
• No. of pages: 416
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 228 mm x 24 mm
• Subject: Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous