Dark Nights, Deadly Waters by Keith Warren Lloyd

Dark Nights, Deadly Waters by Keith Warren Lloyd

Eighty feet long, built of layered mahogany and powered by three monstrous 1500-horsepower V-12 engines, the US Navy's Patrol Torpedo (PT) boats screamed across the water at over forty knots. They were not only fast, but also armed to the teeth, bristling with a deadly array of machine guns, automatic cannons, torpedoes, and depth charges. Duty aboard the boats was often reserved for the spirited, the aggressive, and the very young, the average age of a PT sailor being twenty-four years of age. The "mosquito boats" carried out a variety of missions during the war, including scouting and reconnaissance, attacking enemy shipping, search and rescue, interdiction of supply routes, strafing of enemy shore installations, supporting coast watchers and special operations forces, and even putting armed crew members ashore to perform commando-style raids on far-flung enemy outposts.

The boats were used in every theater of the Second World War, but they are most famous for their daring exploits in the South Pacific, where they were the US Navy's first line of defense against the "Tokyo Express," the nightly attacks of Japanese destroyers against American forces on Guadalcanal. Dark Nights, Deadly Waters tells the story of the first PT boats deployed to the fetid and malarial island of Tulagi, in the desperate early days of America's "island hopping" campaign across the Pacific. Using a gritty and evocative narrative style--citing first-hand accounts, after-action reports, and official navy documents--author Keith Warren Lloyd describes in vivid detail the austere conditions under which the sailors lived and worked, and the highly dangerous nocturnal missions they performed.

Keith Warren Lloyd is an author and historian, a professional firefighter, and a U.S. Navy veteran. His most recent book, for The Lyons Press, The Great Desert Escape tells the true story of 25 German sailors who tunneled their way out of the Papago Park Prisoner of War Camp in Phoenix, Arizona in 1944. His first novel, Cape Hatteras, about a shipwrecked German U-boat officer landing on America's East Coast, was published in 2008. His biography of Medal of Honor recipient Frank Luke Jr., Above and Beyond was published in 2015. He has published two other historical novels. He lives in Arizona.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781493072064
ISBN 10	1493072064
Title	Dark Nights, Deadly Waters
Author	Keith Warren Lloyd
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Rowman & Littlefield
Year published	2023-11-07
Number of pages	296
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.