Torpedo
Автор: Roger Branfill-Cook
Год издания: 0000
The torpedo was the greatest single game-changer in the history of naval warfare. For the first time it allowed a small, cheap torpedo-firing vessel—and by extension a small, minor navy—to threaten the largest and most powerful warships afloat. The traditional concept of seapower, based on huge fleets of expensive capital ships, required radical rethinking because of this important naval weapon. This book is a broadranging international history of the weapon, tracing not only its origins and technical progress down to the present day, but also its massive impact on all subsequent naval wars. Torpedo contains much new technical information that has come to light over the past thirty years and covers all of the improved capabilities of the weapon. Heavily illustrated with photos and technical drawings this is a book no enthusiast or historian can afford to miss.
Damn the Torpedos!
Автор: P. Alexander Fraser
Год издания:
Captain Fraser learned most every leadership trait he needed to know as a ship captain and as a senior business executive in the first sixty seconds of his induction into the United States Naval Academy.Those sixty seconds taught the leadership traits that were evident in Admiral David Farragut’s infamous order: “Damn the Torpedoes! Full Speed Ahead!” when his attack at Mobile Bay was in danger of failing.Those sixty seconds also taught the leadership basics that were evident in Admiral Chester Nimitz when he ordered the Pacific Fleet to meet the Japanese at the Battle of Midway.Those sixty seconds can also teach business leaders how to lead.Damn the Torpedoes! is a book about how those same sixty seconds taught Captain Fraser how to have more successful military and business careers. When then Midshipman Fraser answered a question about his laundry number by saying: “I don’t know,” he learned during the ensuing push-ups that there are only four answers to a question or order: “No excuse, sir,” “I’ll find out, sir,” “yes or no, sir,” and “aye-aye, sir.”Those four answers teach the four basic traits of leadership: accountability, thinking ahead, ethics, and motivation. Damn the Torpedoes!, through personal and historical stories, shows how those four traits embedded in a sea captain can be used by business and organizational leaders to make their own careers and companies more successful. Examples from the author’s dual career experiences, the Battle of Mobile Bay, the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Cape St. George, Desert Shield/Storm, Enron, Tylenol, CNN, Intuit, and Airbnb all show how the four leadership traits are key both afloat and ashore.The book is a unique look at business leadership from a very different perspective than those taken by other books on leadership. It is a book about leadership lessons learned by ship captains over the centuries that can be applied to business.Damn the Torpedoes! is also unique in that the author has had two careers: one as Navy ship captain and the second as president of one of the divisions of Turner Broadcasting. He is qualified to speak authoritatively from experience on those leadership traits of sea captains that can be successfully used by organizational leaders ashore.
Torpedo Junction
Автор: Homer Hickam Jr.
Год издания:
Slaughter at sea—just miles from U.S. soil!In 1942 German U-boats turned the shipping lanes off Cape Hatteras into a sea of death. Cruising up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard, they sank 259 ships, littering the waters with cargo and bodies. As astonished civilians witnessed explosions from American beaches, fighting men dubbed the area «Torpedo Junction.» And while the U.S. Navy failed to react, a handful of Coast Guard sailors scrambled to the front lines. Outgunned and out-maneuvered, they heroically battled the deadliest fleet of submarines ever launched. Never was Germany closer to winning the war.In a moving ship-by-ship account of terror and rescue at sea, Homer Hickam chronicles a little-known saga of courage, ingenuity, and triumph in the early years of World War II. From nerve-racking sea duels to the dramatic ordeals of sailors and victims on both sides of the battle, Hickam dramatically captures a war we had to win—because this one hit terrifyingly close to home.