The U.S. Navy Against the Axis: Surface Combat, 1941-1945

The U.S. Navy against the Axis tells the story of the U.S. Navy's surface fleet in World War II with an emphasis on ship-to-ship combat. The book refutes the widely-held notion that the attack on Pearl Harbor rendered battleships obsolete and that aviation and submarines dominated the Pacific War. It demonstrates how the surface fleet played a decisive role at critical junctures. It was crucial to America's ultimate victory and its story holds many lessons for today's Navy and the nation as a whole. >The U.S. Navy against the Axis describes how swift adaptability and intellectual honesty were fundamental to the Navy's success against Japan. The underlying premise is that the nation cannot assume that in a conflict against conventional or asymmetric enemies, it holds title to the same virtues the Navy demonstrated three generations ago. Instead those lessons need to be constantly studied and affirmed in the face of postwar mythologies, lest they be forgotten.

Vincent P. O’Hara is a naval historian and the author, coauthor, or editor of seventeen books including Struggle for the Middle Sea and Fighting in the Dark. He was the Naval Institute Author of the Year in 2016 for Torch. His work has also appeared in many magazines and journals and has been translated into Spanish, Japanese, and Italian. He holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley and lives in Chula Vista, California.