Discover new selections
$3.99

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Sold by Amazon.com Services LLC.
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Robert C. Stern
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The US Navy and the War in Europe Kindle Edition

by Robert C. Stern (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 out of 5 stars 14 ratings
The author of Big Gun Battles “shows how the US Navy was slowly but surely drawn into WW2 in the Atlantic theatre of operations . . . well researched” (Warships Magazine).

Although the defeat of Japan was the US Navy’s greatest contribution to the Second World War, it also played a significant role in the battle against Hitler. Even before Germany declared war in 1941, US naval vessels were actively engaged in Atlantic convoy battles, and suffered their first casualties long before the Pearl Harbor attack formally pitched America into the conflict. Thereafter the US Navy immediately sent reinforcements to the over-stretched Royal Navy, taking part in attacks on German-occupied Norway, flying aircraft to Malta and Egypt from its carriers and adding protection to the convoys to Russia. Its involvement in the crucial Battle of the Atlantic was also substantial, and the invasions of North Africa and Europe from 1942 onwards would have been unthinkable without the massive US forces. As late as 1945 the crossing of the Rhine by the Allied armies was heavily dependent on US Navy assets and expertise.

It is not surprising that the Pacific campaign should have received so much attention from naval historians, but as a result the European effort has been undervalued and largely side-lined. This book is intended to redress the balance—not just to chronicle the many little-known US operations in the Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean, but to reach a more rounded judgment of the US Navy’s contribution to victory in Europe.
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    306 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Seaforth Publishing
  4. Publication date
    April 3, 2012
  5. File size
    37.0 MB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
Next slide of product details
Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert C. Stern has published more than twenty books on military and naval subjects including Battle Beneath the Waves, Destroyer Battles, Fire from the Sky, and The U.S. Navy and the War in Europe.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00KIXWL1U
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Seaforth Publishing (April 3, 2012)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 3, 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 37.0 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 14 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Robert C. Stern

Robert C. Stern

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Robert C. Stern has been writing naval history for more than thirty-five years, during which time he has published ten major works and numerous magazine articles and pictorial monographs. His major works include The Battleship Holiday: The Naval Treaties and Capital Ship Design, which analyzes the impact of the naval arms limitation treaties of the 1920s and ‘30s on the development of the major warships built by the world’s navies, Fire from the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat, which is a retelling of the emergence of the kamikaze weapon in the Second World War and the strategies and tactics developed to cope with this potent threat and The US Navy and the War in Europe, which describes the often-overlooked contribution by the US Navy in the European Theater in the Second World War. His most recent work is Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea, which is part of the Twentieth-Century Battles series from Indiana University Press, telling the story of the first major carrier air battle in naval history. His other main interest is photography, which can be seen at stern-photography.com. He lives in Cupertino, CA, with his wife Beth and a very uninterested cat.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
14 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

  • Cat Mama
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
    Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    Mr. Stern did it again- I enjoyed this work thoroughly and learned quite a bit. Many thanks for your excellent work.
    2 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Bayard B.
    4.0 out of 5 stars Thorough general history of US Navy involvement in the Atlantic and Mediterranean campaigns.
    Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2018
    This is the best general history of the US Navy involvement in the Atlantic and Mediterranean campaigns I have found. You would need to read specialized histories of specific battles or subjects to do better.

    A couple of books that I think offer much more detail or a more thorough study on the war at sea in the Atlantic are:

    * "The Atlantic Campaign -- World War II's Great Struggle at Sea" by Dan Van Der Tat (1988);

    * "How the War Was Won" by O'Brien (2015).
    5 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Anthony Carmignani
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    good amount of pictures and chapters are organized well
    One person found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Dave
    5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent and well-illustrated guide to the US Navy's role in the European side of the Second World War
    Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2018
    Generally excellent. ‘The US Navy and the War in Europe’ covers USN and Coast Guard operations from September 1939 through to May 1945, and includes discussions of broader strategic issues and plenty of vignettes, all the while well illustrated by an excellent selection of photos. From the start of the neutrality patrol through the initial escorting of convoys before way broke out, to Torch, Husky, Avalanche and Overlord, as well as the involvement of US ships in the seas of Norway, Stern does an excellent job of giving the reader insight into the range of US naval operations in and around Europe during the Second World War.

    The quality of writing is very high and accessible (although it does use a number of nautical terms, but nothing too daunting even for someone who hasn’t read naval history before), and the discussion flows well, carrying you along. The editing is generally sound (only a very few minor grammatical errors that I noticed) and the research thorough, with a comprehensive bibliography provided. While the chapters are large, there is a good index making it easy to find key moments, ships or operations.

    However, it’s not flawless - while the author’s analysis is generally on point, there were one or two times when the discussion was a little unbalanced. The clearest and most glaring case of this is when Stern goes out of his way to exonerate King and Andrews of poor leadership during the early stages of Operation Drumbeat. It lays it on just a bit thick when it talks of the ambiguity of the benefits of convoys, such that it is likely to mislead less-informed readers (although I doubt this is intentional), and doesn’t make a very strong case at all that King was restricted by the information available to him.

    There was only one factual error I came across, on p. 225, which notes Rear Admiral C F Boyer as the commander of the bombardment group with TF 124, when as best I can tell that position was held by C F Bryant.

    The issues few and far between though. Just enough to be worth mentioning, but by no means enough to outweigh the rest of the book. The vast majority of the discussion is both valuable and enjoyable reading, and well worth a read for people interested in the USN in World War Two, or World War Two/naval history more generally.
    3 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Albert A. Nofi
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Reminder of the U.S. Navy's Role in the Defeat of Germany
    Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2013
    A summary of the review on StrategyPage.Com:

    'Although the U.S. Navy was heavily committed to the fight with Japan during the Second World War, it also had an major role in that against Germany. Yet despite Samuel Eliot Morison’s four detailed volumes on the subject, this part of the Navy’s war has received much less coverage from historians, and is today hardly remembered. He opens with a look at the fleet’s operations in the period from “Neutrality Patrol” to virtual outright hostilities that began well before Pearl Harbor, to which he devotes nearly a quarter of his text. Stern then follows the fleet, and several individual officers, through the great convoy battles, the importance of the U.S. Navy’s “presence” to the containment of the German fleet, the successive invasions of Northwest Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, and even the Navy’s role in the crossing of the Rhine. A valuable read for anyone interested in the U.S. Navy or the Second World War.'

    For the full review, see StrategyPage.Com
    3 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report