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• Establishing an air station
• The USS Shenandoah and the early years
• The USS Los Angeles: training and experimentation
• The USS Akron and USS Macon
• Lakehurst: international airport
• Preparations for war
• The war years
• Postwar progress
• End of the program
• Afterword
• Appendixes
• A. Commanding officers, NAS Lakehurst (1921-62)
• B. Performance and other data for U.S. Navy airships (1915-61)
• U.S. Navy lighter-than-air headquarters and facilities, Second World War
• Memorandum on status of lighter-than-air
• E. Postwar airship deliveries to the U.S. Navy
• F. Last airships in the U.S. Navy aircraft inventory.

Originally published in 1990, Sky Ships is easily the most comprehensive history of U.S. Navy airships ever written. The Naval Institute Press is releasing this new edition - complete with two hundred new photographs--to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the book's publication. Impressed by Germany's commercial and military Zeppelins, the United States initiated its own airship program in 1915. Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey was homeport for several of the largest machines ever to navigate the air. The success of the commercial rigid airship peaked in 1936 with transatlantic round trips between Central Europe and the Americas by Hindenburg and by Graf Zeppelin - ending with the infamous fire in 1937. That setback, the onset of war, and the accelerated progress of heavier-than-air technology ended rigid airship development. The Navy continued to use blimps to protect Allied shipping during World War II. Following the war, the Navy persisted with efforts to integrate the airships, but the program was finally discontinued in the early 1960s.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A pictorial account of the changing role of US naval aircraft since the end of World War II - from protector of the United States forces and symbol of American power throughout the world to international avenger and peacekeeper. Focusing on the aircraft and the personnel who fly and service them, the book features a range of different aircraft types - from the FD-2 Phantom (the first US pure jet to land aboard an aircraft carrier) to the F-14 Tomcat and F/A-18 Hornet heavy carrier-based fighters of the 1990s. US maritime power has its beginnings in the Pacific between 1941 and 1945, when carrier-borne aircraft won overwhelming victories against the Imperial Japanese Navy at Guadalcanal, the Marianas, and Okinawa - all but erasing the black memory of Pearl Harbour. Post-war, America benefited greatly from German wartime aeronautical research and British developments in jet engine and carrier technology. As the Cold War intensified, America could not afford to lag behind, especially when the uneasy peace in Korea was shattered in 1950 and American aircraft were confronted with the MiG-15 for the first time. This gave rise to the development of supersonic fighter planes, such as the A-4 Skyhawk, used in the controversial bombing campaigns against North Vietnam in the late '60s and early '70s. By the mid-1980s, US naval carrier-based aircraft proved a very efficient avenger - and deterrent - in the fight against international terrorism. Most recently, during the Gulf War of 1991, naval units at sea joined forces with the land-based strike aircraft in Operation "Desert Storm", when the US Navy averaged 125-150 sorties per day per carrier. This text contains more than 200 photographs from official US Navy archives and private collections - many of which are previously unpublished.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A history of the development of medical treatment and professionalization in the early US Navy. This study traces the evolution of medical practice in the Navy from the time of the first frigates in 1794 to the establishment of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in the Navy Department in 1842. The book describes the role of the naval doctor and examines the influence of health on readiness, morale, promotions and retention.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
In this first detailed history of the development of medical treatment and professionalization in the early U.S. Navy, Harold Langley traces the evolution of medical practice in the Navy from the time Congress authorized the building of the first frigates in 1794, to the establishment of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in the Navy Department in 1842. Langley reveals that the earliest federal efforts to deal with sailors' health care problems were seriously flawed. The early hospital system was poorly funded, sailors' contributions were misappropriated, and the hospitals themselves were often administered in a shameful fashion. At the same time, medical officers commanded little respect from their naval colleagues, who rarely considered medical men to be "real officers". In the first half of the nineteenth century, legal and administrative changes significantly improved the lot of medical officers and of the men under their care. Langley shows how these changes helped to shape health care in the later U.S. Navy. He also offers detailed descriptions of just what the naval doctor did, and examines the influence of health on readiness, morale, promotions, and retention.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Wiley: the early years
• The road to Lakehurst
• The USS Shenandoah (ZR 1)
• The USS Los Angeles (ZR 3)
• The Shenandoah Disaster
• Changes in command
• Commanding the Los Angeles
• The USS Tennessee (BB 43)
• The USS Akron (ZRS 4)
• The crash of the Akron
• Aftermath of the Akron
• The USS Macon (ZRS 5)
• The end of an era
• USS Sirius (AK 15), Hell Gate, and helium
• War and battleships
• Kamikazes and beyond

This book is simultaneously a biography of Admiral Herbert Victor Wiley and a history of the U.S. Navy's lighter-than-air program. As tensions rose between Japan and the U.S. over control of East Asia and the Pacific Ocean the prospects of war between the two nations increased. The Navy tracked the Germans' use of zeppelins during the First World War and saw in them an aircraft with the potential to conduct long-range reconnaissance over the oceans - something that could not be achieved by airplanes or surface ships. While rapid progress was being made in manned flight it was still young enough that the future of LTA vs. HTA flight was unknown. At the time however airships had a much greater range than airplanes making them suitable for reconnaissance. In its history the Navy had four great airships - the U.S.S. Shenandoah the U.S.S. Los Angeles the U.S.S. Akron and the U.S.S. Macon. Wiley served on all four of these airships and the history of these vessels is covered through the career of Wiley. Three of the airships ended in disaster and Wiley survived the crash of two of them. The book explores in detail the events leading to the crash of each airship through examination of the records of the Navy's Courts of Inquiry that investigated the cause of each crash. The book also tracks issues surrounding the use of non-flammable helium as a lifting gas instead of highly explosive hydrogen used by the Germans. The U.S. had a monopoly on the supply of helium. While Germany sought to purchase helium from the U.S. the government board governing the sale of helium blocked is availability to Germany on the basis it might be used for wartime purposes. Dr. Hugo Eckener had run the Zeppelin works in Friedrichshaven since the end of WWI and he had a vision for LTA flight that was peaceful including international transoceanic passenger and freight services. The outbreak of WW II ended the zeppeling industry and dashed all of Eckener's dreams. Following the crash of the Macon Wiley returned to the surface fleet eventually becoming Commander of Destroyer Squadron 29 in the Asiatic Fleet shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

With the advent of the atomic bomb in 1945 and its impact on strategic thinking, the future of naval aviation looked bleak. Rapid demobilization after the war eliminated many carriers, and most policy makers believed that future wars would be fought with nuclear weapons delivered by land-based aircraft. In "Nuclear Weapons and Aircraft Carriers", Jerry Miller traces the struggle of respected naval leaders to promote a different vision and the innovations in the design and engineering of carriers and aircraft that resulted. He argues that the Navy's hard-won nuclear capability played a significant role in ending the Cold War.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book covers the history of the U.S. Coast Guard from 1790 under Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, when the Service was called the U.S. Revenue Marine, to World War I, during which the naval agency, then called the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, was combined with the U.S. Life-Saving Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915. The Coast Guard has historically served with or under the U.S. Navy in national defense missions. The maritime conflicts in that time frame include a war with France; War of 1812-1815; clashes with pirates, slave ships, and the Seminole Indians; War with Mexico; the Civil War of 1861-1865); Spanish-American War (1898); and World War I (1914-1918). The Great War involved the USCG and USN in domestic and maritime missions across the Atlantic to Europe, merchant ship convoy escorts, and anti-submarine warfare. The naval period surveys the evolution of wooden hulled, wind powered sailing ships to fuel powered iron hulled vessels. The historical geography of the wars is illustrated with maps created by retired IBM engineer and military historian David H. Allen.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

In September 1955, Navy Lieutenant Commander Grover B. Windham and a crew of eight flew out of Guantanamo Bay into the eye of Hurricane Janet - a routine weather reconnaissance mission from which they never returned. In the wake of World War II, the Air Force and the Navy discovered new civilian arenas where pilots could test their courage and skill - weather reconnaissance was one of them. Hurricane hunters flew into raging storms to gauge their strength and predict their paths. Without the modern technology of the 21st century they relied on rudimentary radar systems to locate the hurricane's eye and estimated the drift of their aircraft by looking at the windblown waves below. Drawing from Navy documents and interviews with members of the squadron and relatives of the crew, this book reconstructs the ill-fated mission, from preflight checks to the moment of their final transmission.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"This is the story of the first women naval aviators and their struggles and triumphs as they earned their Wings of Gold, learned to fly increasingly sophisticated jet fighters and helicopters, mastered aircraft carrier landings, served at sea, and reached heights of command that would have been unthinkable less than a generation before. It is also the story of the legacy they left behind"-- Provided by publisher