Foreword:
Books about the U.S. Navy usually tell of John Paul Jones, John Barry, Decatur, Farragut, and Perry—or of Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, and the Coral Sea. They tell of the heroes and the battles that turned the tide of victory and changed history.
It is good for young Americans to know of these men and their deeds. They are an important part of our history and our national heritage. At the same time, it is good for young people to understand how important the Navy remains today.
More than three hundred years ago, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote that whoever commands the sea commands the world. This statement is as true today as it was then. Nothing has happened to change it, even in this age of atomic power, guided missiles, satellites, and supersonic airplanes.
For the United States is truly an island. It is bounded on two sides by vast oceans. As a nation, we depend on them as surely as we depend on the highways and railroads that lead to our cities and towns. Without highways, our cities would starve. Our country could not remain strong and free.
Protecting the sea lanes is one of our Navy's most important jobs.
This book is mostly about the Navy today—the excitement of a carrier task force launching a strike against an "enemy" base on land, frogmen creeping ashore to lay the groundwork for a massive amphibious assault, the men who hide beneath the sea in submarines carrying the mighty Polaris missile, and the constant struggle for supremacy between the surface ship and the submarine. Young people who have read this book may not know all about the United States Navy. Neither do old-timers who have spent their entire adult lives in the Navy. But readers of this book will probably know more about the U.S. Navy than their fathers who fought in World War II.
I hope so, for the Navy needs to be known and understood by the people who depend on it for their survival. Its tasks—and the tasks of its sister services, as well—have never been more important to our national welfare.
—C.W. Nimitz - Fleet Admiral, U.S. Navy - Berkeley, California
—from the book
*Illustrated with official U.S. Navy photographs
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