Books about Convoys from Amazon.com

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The Western Ocean 1942. From the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard’s orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy. A relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea — in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground. HMS Gladiator was part of that war. Fighting for survival in a war with no rules….
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Why Me, Lord? is a firsthand account by a veteran of one of the most tragic chapters in World War II naval history, the infamous PQ 17 convoy across the North Atlantic to north Russia in the summer of 1942. 35 merchant ships carried war materiel to support the Soviet defense against invading Nazi armies before the U.S. and Great Britain opened a second front with the invasion of North Africa late in 1942. After the convoy was abandoned by its American and British naval escort vessels in U-boat-infested waters, 24 of its 35 merchant ships were lost to enemy attack. The author, then a young U.S. Naval officer commanded a Navy Armed Guard contingent aboard the American freighter, S.S. Ironclad, and was awarded the Silver Star for valor as a result of his leadership during combat with attacking German aircraft. He tells the story of his experiences in vivid detail and paints a memorable portrait of both the wartime navy and Soviet Russia's White Sea ports. The book also details the return voyage aboard the U.S. liberty ship, S.S. Richard Bland, which, if anything, was even more harrowing. The Bland was sunk off Iceland after being torpedoed three times north of the Arctic Circle, with its surviving crew members, including the author, being forced into lifeboats in frigid North Atlantic waters. Written more than 60 years after the events it describes, Why Me, Lord? is one of the very few, and quite possibly the last, firsthand accounts of this important, though little known, chapters of World War II naval history..
Price: $15.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this gripping, page-turning account, Sam Moses has told a story in the tradition of Sebastian Junger’s A Perfect Storm, Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers, and Hampton Sides’s Ghost Soldiers It’s a story about the heroism of two men in battle at sea during World War II, and one woman fleeing Nazi Norway with her child. It’s about how courage can change the course of history.
AT ALL COSTS: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Marines Turned the Tide of World War II is the astonishing untold account, with original historical reporting, of how two men faced unfathomable danger to help save the island of Malta, Churchill’s crux of the war.
In 1942, the tiny island of Malta was the most heavily bombed place on earth. Hitler needed Malta as a stepping-stone to get to the oil in Iraq and Iran (Persia at the time). Blockaded by sea, Malta was running on empty, in food, fuel and ammunition. Axis U-boats and dive-bombers made supply convoys to Malta more like suicide missions. In this last-hope convoy, 50 warships escorted 13 freighters carrying aviation fuel, and a single critical tanker, the SS Ohio, with 107,000 barrels of oil from Texas. Winston Churchill had traveled to Washington and asked FDR for the tanker–his prime ministership was at stake over this mission to Malta.
Relentlessly dive-bombed and repeatedly torpedoed, the Ohio suffered huge hits and was abandoned. Two young American merchant mariners–pulled from the sea after their own ship went down in flames–boarded the ravaged tanker, repaired her guns and fought off German and Italian dive-bombers, as the sinking Ohio was towed at 4 knots toward Malta with a tiny crew of volunteers.
Sam Moses’ AT ALL COSTS is a triumphant story of human bravery: fearless, selfless acts by men determined to save a ship and win a war; profound communal courage from an island under brutal siege; and leaders who understood the cause of freedom.

Kirkus (starred review)
A historical footnote provides a riveting tale of true American grit during World War II.
In 1942, the island of Malta was the primary launching point in the Mediterranean for Allied
aircraft and submarine attacks against Axis supply convoys. At the height of the North African
campaign, Rommel’s tanks prepared to sweep into Egypt, Iran and Iraq. The only thing they lacked was
the fuel to get there, and the shortage was equally desperate on Malta. The Allies launched Operation
Pedestal, a last-ditch effort to re-supply the base by sending a convoy from Britain through the Gibraltar
Strait to the beleaguered island. The convoy, which included the American tanker Ohio and the U.S.
freighter Santa Elisa, was anything but a milk run. Vietnam vet Moses (Fast Guys, Rich Guys and
Idiots, not reviewed) crafts a thrilling adventure on the high seas, though it takes a while to get started.
The book’s first third juxtaposes Malta’s plight against the stories of two American merchant seamen
on the Santa Elisa: Lonnie Dales and Fred Larsen, through whose eyes the battle will be viewed in bluecollar
detail. Once Operation Pedestal begins, the narrative is all action. The convoy comes under
repeated attack, lives are lost, the Santa Elisa is sunk. Dales and Larsen find themselves aboard the
wounded Ohio, full to the brim with Texas crude. If they can hold off Nazi attacks and keep their new
ship afloat long enough to reach Malta, the operation will be a success. Moses takes readers directly
into the heat of battle, demonstrating a strong command of historical detail.
Highly recommended for fans of naval adventure. (Agent: Peter Riva/InternationalTransactions, Inc.)

"At All Costs is an extraordinary work of research and an exciting read that pays tribute to a crucial enterprise taken against incredible odds. Sam Moses has brought the ghastliness of war and the beauty of heroism together, in jarring union." –Frank Deford

“This book tells a great story. But Sam Moses is not just sharing a gripping tale. He is sharing an important and oft neglected story about a battle that played a decisive role in shaping the outcome of WW II. You will meet people who will linger in memory for their bravery, foolishness, or wisdom.” –Ken Auletta, author of Backstory

“Thrillingly told and beautifully researched, At All Costs is not just the against-all-odds story of the saving of Malta, but also of how the fate of nations can turn on the personal bravery of two ordinary men.”
–Robert Kurson, author of Shadow Divers

“Sam Moses has skillfully blended the vivid recollections of many eyewitnesses with a wealth of original documentary research to produce an immensely readable and authoritative account of this crucial operation.” –Mark Whitmore, Director of Collections, Imperial War Museum, London, England.
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At the height of The Battle of the Atlantic, half of the Allied convoy escorts on the main trade routes were Canadian, but history has largely ignores their contribution and their bitter sacrifices of their struggle against U-boat attacks in 1942 and 1943.

In North Atlantic Run, noted military historian Marc Milner tells the story of this drama at sea, detailing the dynamic role played by Canada and The Royal Canadian Navy in the battle for the convoys..
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Between 1939 and 1945, more than 36,000 Allied sailors and navy airmen and 36,000 merchant seamen lost their lives in perhaps the least-known major battle of World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic All the tanks, planes, bombs, and other vital supplies that the U.S. used to fight in Europe -- as well as the American troops themselves -- crossed the Atlantic aboard ship, a journey made perilous by the German U-boats that prowled the seas. In Bitter Ocean author and maritime journalist David Fairbank White gives us a masterful, authoritative account of how these American, Canadian, and British air and sea forces fought the Germans and prevailed -- at a terrible cost.

As dreadful as the loss of life was for the Allies, the Germans fared even worse; more than 80 percent of German U-boat crewmen never made it home. Drawing on a wealth of archival material as well as interviews with veterans on both sides of the ocean campaign, White takes us aboard ship and beneath the waves as he reconstructs this epic battle. Bitter Ocean vividly evokes the grim years when Admiral Karl Dönitz's U-boats succeeded in sinking more tonnage than Allied shipyards could replace and shows us the technological breakthroughs that reversed the course of the battle in 1943.

Written with a captivating immediacy, Bitter Ocean is a triumph of scholarship and narrative history.

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The men of the British Merchant Navy, the American Merchant Marine, and the Canadian Merchant Navy, were the largely forgotten heroes of what was the longest, as well as one of the bitterest and most costly, campaigns of the Second World War. They suffered their first casualties on the day war was declared, 3 September 1939, when the liner Athenia was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland, and their last on 7 May 1945, the eve of VE Day, when two ships were sunk by a U-boat in Scotland's Pentland Firth. This book is a tribute in words and pictures to the ships and the men who made victory possible. The many rare photographs, paintings and memorabilia which the authors have assembled convey an unforgettable impression of the desperate dangers faced by seamen in some of the most lonely and terrible places on earth - the storm-tossed waters of the North Atlantic, the ice-fields of North Cape and the Barents Sea, the vast, empty expanses of the Pacific and the Southern Oceans. The accompanying text draws upon the unpublished memoirs of those who sailed in the convoys, who survived days adrift in lifeboats and who faced, again and again, the torpedoes of the U-boats and the bombs of the Luftwaffe..
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