Bøger af Rod Macdonald

An expanded and updated second edition of the classic dive guide. The definitive guide to diving these fabled shipwrecks.

"...informative and detailed with some interesting and little-known anecdotes as well." -- National Maritime Historical Society.Early on Sunday, 7 December 1941, Japanese carrier-borne aircraft launched a surprise attack against the US Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor. It was a date that President Roosevelt declared "will live in infamy".During the strike, Japanese planes attacked the seven US battleships lined up in Battleship Row - and the flag battleship USS Pennsylvania, in drydock for overhaul. The battleship USS Arizona exploded from a bomb hit at the forward magazine killing 1,177 officers and men. On USS Oklahoma, 429 men were killed - many trapped inside as the great battleship capsized after aerial torpedo strikes. USS West Virginia, meanwhile, was hit by at least seven torpedoes and several bombs, and engulfed in flames; she settled onto the bottom on an even keel. USS California was hit by a pair of torpedoes and a bomb, flooding slowly, she too settled on the bottom. The other four battleships present were more lightly damaged, with the crippled Nevada, the only battleship to get underway during the attack, being successfully beached.By the time the assault was over, eight battleships, three light cruisers, three destroyers, a training ship and other smaller vessels had been sunk or damaged. Hundreds of US aircraft had been damaged or destroyed, while 2,403 Americans had been killed.Within a week of the Japanese attack, a great salvage organization had been formed. Very quickly the lightly damaged battleships Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee had been repaired in naval yards and put back into service to protect the west coast of the USA.Of the eight battleships attacked, all but Arizona were raised, temporarily patched-up and sent back to naval yards on the west coast of America for final repair and modernization. Main battery guns and ordnance were recovered from the wrecked Arizona, which would then be left to rest on the bottom of the harbor for eternity - as a memorial to the events of that fateful December day. USS Nevada was lifted off the bottom in February 1942, California in March 1942 and West Virginia in June 1942. The capsized Oklahoma, while eventually parbuckled and raised, was found to be too badly damaged to be fully rebuilt.Six of the eight battleships would thus return to service, with improved protection against bombs and torpedoes and being fitted with the latest anti-aircraft and gunnery systems. They would re-enter to the war to wreak a terrible revenge - making their presence felt during the reconquest of the Aleutian Islands and the Philippines, and the great battles of Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Nevada would go on Atlantic convoy duty before bombarding German positions off Utah beach as the D-Day Normandy landings began. This is the story of those six.

The new breed of American fast aircraft carriers could make thirty-three knots, and each carried almost one hundred strike aircraft. Brought together as Task Force 58, also known as the Fast Carrier Task Force, this armada at times comprised more than one hundred ships carrying more than ten thousand men afloat. By 1945, more than one thousand combat aircraft, fighters, dive-and torpedo-bombers could be launched in under an hour. Rod Macdonald covers the birth of naval aviation, the appearance of the first modern carriers in the 1920s, through to the famous surprise six-carrier Kidō Butai Japanese raid against Pearl Harbor, and then the early U.S. successes of 1942 at the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. The fast carriers allowed America, in late 1942 and early 1943, to finally move from bitter defense against the Japanese expansionist onslaught, to mounting her own offensive to retake the Pacific. Task Force 58 swept west and north from the Solomon Islands to the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, neutralizing Truk in Micronesia, and Palau in the Caroline islands, before the vital Mariana Islands operations, the Battle of Saipan, the first battle of the Philippine Sea and the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. The strikes by Task Force 58 took Allied forces across the Pacific, to the controversial Battle of Leyte Gulf and to Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Task Force 58 had opened the door to the Japanese home islands themselves--allowing US bombers to finally get close enough to launch the devastating nuclear bombing raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Task Force 58 participated in virtually all the US Navy's major battles in the Pacific theatre during the last two years of the war. Historian Rod Macdonald has created the most detailed account to date of the fast carrier strike force, the force that brought Japan to its knees and brought World War II to its crashing conclusion.

* Reissued as Volume I of The Diving Trilogy* Chronicles Rod's diving adventures from around the world * A spellbinding journey of danger and excitement beneath the waves

Written by a renowned expert, this is the most detailed account to date of the fast carrier strike force, the force that brought Japan to its knees and brought the Second World War to its crashing conclusion.

Recounted with his usual level of meticulous historical research, Rod weaves an easily readable account of the build-up to and implementation of Operation Desecrate 1 - the raid undertaken to destroy Japanese ships and aircraft in the lagoons of Palau. He uses his intimate knowledge of shipwrecks to reveal in glorious detail each of the 20 major Japanese WWII shipwrecks lying at the bottom of the Palauan lagoons today. On 30th March, 1944 Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters made an Initial fighter sweep of the lagoon to destroy Japanese air cover. Simultaneously Grumman Avenger torpedo-bombers dropped their mines in the channels around the lagoon to block Japanese ships attempting to escape the following onslaught. With the Japanese naval fortress quickly becoming a prison and with Japanese air cover quickly destroyed, successive group strikes of torpedo bombers and dive-bombers swept over the lagoon, sinking the shipping and destroying the airfields. Palau was neutralised as a Japanese naval and air base in a repeat of the same Task Force 58 raid, Operation Hailstone, on Truk Lagoon 1,000 miles to the east just six weeks earlier. Today, 20 major Japanese WWII shipwrecks lie in the beautiful clear waters of the tropical paradise of Palau surrounded by reefs and coral wall drop-offs. A number of long-lost wrecks have recently been relocated including a Japanese freighter filled with depth charges and Army helmets. This was found in 1989 but remained unidentified until now - after painstaking research Rod reveals her identify for the first time in the book. Each wreck is covered in detail and is supported by underwater photography and by fabulous illustrations by renowned artist Rob Ward. The shipwrecks of Palau are now revealed.

The tragedy of the loss in 1941 of two Royal Navy capital ships, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, the core of Churchill's deterrent Force Z, stunned the world. Churchill had hoped that sending a small powerful squadron of ships to Singapore would deter a threatened Japanese invasion of Malaya and Thailand. He was to be proved tragically wrong. Denuded of aircraft cover, Force Z was left disastrously exposed to air attack. Within eight days of their arrival at Singapore both ships were sunk with huge loss of life in a mass attack by 85 Japanese bombers. It was the Royal Navy's greatest loss in a single engagement and the first time a modern battleship had been sunk by air power. With the naval force at the bottom of the sea, and the RAF almost wiped out in Malaya on day one, Singapore was left with no air or sea protection and fell two months later. This is the first book to explore in detail the wrecks of these two vessels and grippingly narrates a summary of the Japanese threat, Fortress Singapore and the subsequent Japanese invasion. Today the wrecks of these two famous British warships lie on the bottom of the South China Sea, 200 miles north of Singapore and 50 miles offshore. The author was invited as a civilian expert on a military expedition to dive and survey these wrecks and now, for the first time, the wrecks are revealed as they are today. Beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned artist's illustrations of the wrecks, each one is looked at in detail. The story of the loss of these two ships, and of the sacrifice of the men who served in them, is remembered. This has been a personal quest for the author whose grandfather was serving in Singapore when Force Z arrived. His wife and the author's father and two brothers were among the last civilians evacuated from Singapore before the final siege. His grandfather was taken into internment at Changi Gaol by the Japanese and suffered there for three years until Singapore was reoccupied by the British in 1945. Had the Fall of Singapore not happened the way it did the author would not be here to write this truly remarkable book.

For more than 30 years, internationally acclaimed wreck diver and best-selling author, Rod Macdonald, has surveyed and researched shipwrecks around the world. His books such as Dive Scapa Flow and The Darkness Below are household names in the diving world. In Great British Shipwrecks Rod uses his encyclopaedic knowledge and an intimate understanding of shipwrecks, gleaned from a lifetime's diving, to provide a snapshot in time of some of the best known and most revered shipwrecks around the UK. For each of the 37 shipwrecks covered Rod provides a dramatic account of its time afloat and its eventual sinking - with each wreck being beautifully illustrated by renowned marine artist Rob Ward. Rod's journey around the UK starts with the classic recreational diving shipwrecks at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands from giants such as the German WWI battleships, Markgraf, Knig and Kronprinz Wilhelm, to the legendary WWI British cruiser HMS Hampshire on which Lord Kitchener perished on a voyage to Russia in 1916. Rod then travels to the English Channel where he covers such famous ships as the P&O liners Moldavia and Salsette which were lost during WWI with many others such as the SS Kyarra and the British submarine HMS/M M2 - the first submarine to carry a seaplane for reconnaissance. The reader is then taken to the North Channel of the Irish Sea where the famous technical diving wrecks of the White Star liner Justicia, HMS Audacious, the first British battleship lost during WWI, and the SS Empire Heritage, which was lost with its deck cargo of Sherman tanks on a voyage from New York during WWII, are beautifully illustrated. Returning to Scotland, the famous West Coast shipwrecks such as the Thesis, Hispania, Rondo and Shuna in the Sound of Mull grace the pages, in addition to the renowned wrecks of the SS Breda, lost near Oban, and the WWII minelayer HMS Port Napier off Skye. Lastly, Rod covers some major North Sea shipwrecks, revealing for the first time the haunting remains of HMS Pathfinder, the first Royal Navy warship to be sunk by U-boat torpedo during WWI. This is a beautifully illustrated and definitive guide to the greatest shipwrecks around the UK and will be an enlightening and unmissable book for many.

From the best-selling author of four classic UK diving books, comes The Darkness Below - a collection of absorbing adventures gained from a lifetime in diving. As one of the UK's leading Technical Divers, Rod takes the reader on a spellbinding and gripping journey, from first beginnings as a novice scuba diver. Told in intimate detail with a beguiling sense of self-deprecating humour, he recounts epic dives on some of the most fabulous shipwrecks around the world. Terrifying first explorations of virgin shipwrecks far offshore, lost in time and enshrouded in darkness in the silent depths, cram the pages. A daring expedition into the heart of the feared Corryvreckan whirlpool, the third largest in the world, an open sea encounter with Orca killer whales and an agonizing attack of the bends keep the reader engrossed. The palpable gloom, despair and human tragedy of the wrecks is never far away - the cold and darkness of the depths almost resonating with the cries of those who have perished. The fear of entrapment inside a wreck is grippingly described and becomes almost claustrophobic to the reader unfamiliar with the perils of wreck penetration, when snagged nets sometimes billow unseen above the unwary diver. However, there are rewards when survivors from wrecks are keen to speak to someone who has seen and touched their ship that had been lost long ago. This is an unmissable book for all divers and anyone interested in maritime history.