Naval Warfare
The Battle of the Atlantic, U-boat wolfpacks, and the longest campaign of the war.
4 articles
Naval Warfare
The U-Boat Officer Who Served in the US Navy
A captured German submarine commander was given an officer rank and taught Americans to hunt his former comrades
Werner Drechsler was a German U-boat officer aboard U-176 when it was sunk by a US Navy destroyer escort in the Gulf of Mexico in May 1942. After being interrog…
Naval Warfare
The Sailor Who Swam 30 Hours to Keep His Shipmate Afloat
After his destroyer sank, Chen spent a day and a half pulling his drowning friend toward a raft
When the USS Nicholas was torpedoed in 1944, Petty Officer Henry Chen — a Filipino-American sailor from San Pedro — found himself alone in the Pacific with Seam…
Naval Warfare
The Arctic Convoys: The Bear Force Missions That Supplied the Soviet War Machine
The longest, most dangerous naval campaign of the war — and one the Allies barely acknowledge
The Arctic convoys — codenamed PQ, QP, JW, and RA — were the lifeline that supplied the Soviet Union with vast quantities of weapons, vehicles, food, and raw ma…
Naval Warfare
The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff: The Deadliest Maritime Disaster in History
A German ship carrying 10,000 refugees was sunk by a Soviet submarine, killing over 9,000 people
On January 30, 1945, the German refugee ship Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea, killing an estimated 9,343 people — …