{"product_id":"ship-of-ghosts-isbn-9780553384505","title":"Ship of Ghosts","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER • The shocking true story of the USS \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e, FDR’s legendary lost cruiser, and the epic saga of the survivors who faced one of World War II’s most brutal ordeals—from the acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eThe Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Captivating [and] unforgettable . . . A compelling book for anyone intrigued by harrowing tales of courage and the irrepressible will to survive.”—\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA U.S. Naval Institute \u003ci\u003eProceedings\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Son, we’re going to Hell.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe navigator of the USS \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e confided these prophetic words to a young officer as he and his captain charted a course into U.S. naval legend. Renowned as FDR’s favorite warship, the cruiser USS \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, the crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest. It wasn’t a fair fight, but the men of the Houston would wage it to the death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet the crew miraculously escaped disaster again and again—until their luck ran out during a daring action in Sunda Strait. There, hopelessly outnumbered, the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e was finally sunk. The survivors would soon envy the dead. They were captured and made slaves on Japan’s infamous Burma–Thailand Death Railway, which was glamorized by Hollywood but in reality mercilessly reduced men to little more than animals. The prisoners fought back against their dehumanization with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, willpower—and the undying faith that their country would prevail.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUsing journals and letters, rare historical documents, testimony from postwar Japanese war crime tribunals, and the eyewitness accounts of the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e’s survivors, James D. Hornfischer has crafted a testament to human valor so riveting and awe-inspiring, it’s easy to forget that every word of it is true.“With vivid and visceral descriptions of the chaos and valor onboard the doomed \u003ci\u003eHouston \u003c\/i\u003e. . . the author penetrates the thoughts and fears of adrenaline-pumped sailors in the heat of combat. . . . Hornfischer masterfully shapes the narrative. . . . breathing life into an unforgettable epic of human endurance.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eShip of Ghosts \u003c\/i\u003ewould be an unforgettable book if only for its brilliantly wrought account of the massive, chaotic sea battle that destroyed the USS \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e. But that is only the beginning of a story that grows more harrowing with every chapter, and that finally leaves the reader amazed at what human beings are capable of achieving and enduring.”\u003cb\u003e—Stephen Harrigan, author of \u003ci\u003eChallenger Park \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Gates of the Alamo\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“On sea and on land, these intrepid sailors endured enough for a thousand lifetimes. In this riveting account, Hornfischer carefully reconstructs a story none of us should be allowed to forget.”\u003cb\u003e—Hampton Sides, author of \u003ci\u003eBlood and Thunder\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eGhost Soldiers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hornfischer has produced another meticulously researched naval history page-turner in \u003ci\u003eShip of Ghosts.\u003c\/i\u003e He manages to fuse powerful human stories into the great flow of historical events with a singular story-telling talent.”\u003cb\u003e—John F. Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy, author of \u003ci\u003eOn Seas of Glory\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hornfischer has done it again. His narrative is fine-tuned and always compelling but where he truly excels is in his evocative, often lyrical descriptions of combat at sea. Those who enjoyed his previous best-seller will love \u003ci\u003eShip of Ghosts\u003c\/i\u003e—military history at its finest.”\u003cb\u003e—Alex Kershaw, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Bedford Boys and The Few\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Masterly . . . [the] description of the huge and terrifying naval engagements are as overwhelming a stretch of historical writing as I have ever come across. . . . Beautifully written and heartgripping.”\u003cb\u003e—Adam Nicolson, author of \u003ci\u003eGod’s Secretaries\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Recounts perhaps the most devastating untold saga of World War II in piercing detail.”\u003cb\u003e—Donovan Webster, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Burma Road\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e “Hornfischer is quickly establishing himself as doing for the Navy what popular historian Stephen Ambrose did for the Army. . . . So great is the drama of the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e and its survivors that this story seems to tell itself.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eRocky Mountain News\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Hornfischer has painted a compelling picture of one of the most gallant ships and one of the grimmest campaigns in American naval history. He has a positive genius for depicting the surface-warfare sailor in a tight spot. May he write long and give them more memorials.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJames D. Hornfischer\u003c\/b\u003e was a writer, literary agent, and book editor. He was the author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestsellers \u003ci\u003eNeptune’s Inferno, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Soldiers\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eShip of Ghosts,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Fleet at Flood Tide\u003c\/i\u003e, all widely acclaimed accounts of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II, as well as the upcoming \u003ci\u003eWho Can Hold the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e. His books have received numerous awards, including the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Distinguished Service and the Naval Historical Foundation Distinguished Service Award. James D. Hornfischer died in 2021.\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter One\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOff the island of Bali, in the silhouette of mountains made sacred by the favor of local gods, a warship plied the black waters of an equatorial sea. The night of February 4, 1942, found her moving swiftly toward a port on the southern coast of the adjoining island of Java. She had sustained a deep wound that day, an aerial bomb striking her after turret, charring and melting the gun house and its entire stalk. The great blast killed forty-six men. Her captain now sought port to patch his ship and bury his dead with honors. For the flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, this was the first blow of a war not yet sixty days old.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe USS \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e, a heavy cruiser, was the largest combat vessel the U.S. Navy had committed to the Dutch East Indies. She was bound for the port of Tjilatjap. Its colliding consonants compelled American sailors to give the town the more symphonious nickname \"Slapjack\" or, chewing their words more bitterly, \"that lousy dump.\" As the thunder of Japan's opening offensive washed over Indonesia in early 1942, Tjilatjap was one of three havens that Allied warships still maintained in these dangerous waters. With the enemy's invasion fleets pressing down from the north and his planes attacking from land bases ever closer to Java, those harbors were fast becoming untenable. The previous day, February 3, Japanese bombers struck Surabaya, the city in the island's east that was home to Adm. Thomas C. Hart's threadbare squadron of surface combatants. To the west, the port at Batavia (now Jakarta) was a marked target too. As Hart's commanders well knew, Japan's aviators had needed just forty-eight hours after the start of war on December 8 to smash American airpower in the Philippines, sink the two largest Allied warships in the region–the British battleship \u003ci\u003ePrince of Wales\u003c\/i\u003e and the battlecruiser \u003ci\u003eRepulse\u003c\/i\u003e–and land an invasion force on Luzon. The Imperial red tide knew no pause. Flowing southward, operating at high tempo by day and by night, the Japanese executed a leapfrogging series of amphibious invasions down the coasts of Borneo and Celebes, each gain consolidated and used to stage the next assault. The shadow of the Japanese offensive loomed over Java, where the Allies would make a last stand in defense of the old Dutch colonial outpost and aim to blunt Japan's onrushing advance toward Australia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt midnight of February 3, alerted by Allied aircraft to the presence of a Japanese invasion fleet in Makassar Strait, north of Java, the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e had departed Surabaya with a flotilla of U.S. and Dutch warships– the aged light cruiser USS \u003ci\u003eMarblehead\u003c\/i\u003e, the Dutch light cruisers \u003ci\u003eDe Ruyter\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eTromp\u003c\/i\u003e, and an escort of eight destroyers. Under Dutch Rear Adm. Karel W. F. M. Doorman, the striking force steamed by night to avoid Japanese aircraft. But the distance to their target was such that the Allied ships had no choice but to cross the Flores Sea by daylight on February 4. No friendly fighter planes were on hand to cover them. It was about ten o'clock on that bright morning when Japanese bombers began appearing overhead, ending Doorman's mission before it ever really began.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat day had started as so many of them did, with the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e's Marine bugler putting his brass bell to the public address microphone and blowing the call to air defense. As men sprinted to their general quarters stations, they could look up and see the Japanese bombers droning by, one wave after the next, nine at a time, fifty-four in all, locked in tight V formations, silvery fuselages glinting in the sun. Nosing over into shallow power glides from seventeen thousand feet, the twin-engine G3M Nells began their bombing runs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCapt. Albert Harold Rooks steered his ship through the maelstrom of splashes, some of the bombs landing close enough aboard to fracture rivets belowdecks, some falling in patterns dense enough to conceal the six-hundred-foot-long ship behind a temporary mountain range of foamy white seawater. Watching the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e under bombardment, a sailor on another ship said, \"All this water just sort of hung in the air. Then it started to fall back, and out from underneath all this stuff comes the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e going thirty knots.\" A master ship handler, the fifty-year-old skipper had an intuitive sense of his cruiser's gait. He was expert in dodging the bombs that fluttered earthward in the midmorning sun, never hesitating to stretch the limits of the engineering plant or test the skill and endurance of the throttlemen and water tenders and machinists, who gamely kept pace with the sudden engine orders and speed changes, risking the destruction of their delicate machinery by the slightest misstep. Relying on the smart reactions of his snipes as an extension of his own hand, Rooks maneuvered his cruiser like none the crew had ever seen, accelerating and slowing, ordering \"crashbacks\" that wrenched his engines from full ahead straight into full astern, thus steering not only by rudder but by counterturning the propeller screws, the starboard pair surging ahead while the port pulled astern. \"He handled that ship like you or I would handle a motorboat,\" said Howard R. Charles, a private in the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e's seventy-eight-man Marine detachment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy acclamation Rooks was one of the brightest lights to wear four gold bars in the prewar U.S. Navy. He had been Admiral Hart's aide when the Asiatic Fleet boss was superintendent of the Naval Academy. On the teaching staff at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1940, Rooks showed a keen analytical mind, and it was with no evident sarcasm that colleagues called him the second coming of the great naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. In the few months since taking over the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e in Manila, the quietly authoritative skipper had moved out of the shadow of a beloved predecessor and won, it seems, a reputation as a sort of minor deity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn SOC Seagull floatplane was on the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e's catapult, propeller whipping the air at full throttle, its pilot ready for an explosive-charged launch. Under normal conditions in the days before radar, the SOCs were used for reconnaissance and gunnery spotting. Flung aloft from catapults mounted on the quarterdeck amidships, the biplanes would fly out ahead of the ship, climb to around two thousand feet, and spend two or three hours weaving back and forth on either side of the cruiser's base course heading. In combat, they could loiter over an enemy fleet, signaling corrections to the gunnery department. The Seagulls were light enough to grip the air at a speed as low as sixty miles per hour, permitting a leisurely reconnaissance pattern. But now the idea was to get the vulnerable, combustible planes off the ship before the Japanese got lucky with one of their bombs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs another formation of bombers crossed overhead, the antiaircraft officer couldn't stand waiting for the SOC to get airborne. His five-inch guns, elevated high, roared. At once the muzzle blast, just ten feet from the plane, tore the canvas skin right off the plane. As Lt. Harold S. Hamlin recalled, \"the pilot found himself sitting on a picked chicken–the blast had removed every stitch of fabric from the plane. Pilot and crewman scrambled out, and the forlorn-looking plane, naked as a jay-bird, was jettisoned.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e belched so much smoke from her after stack that the antiaircraft crews lost use of the aft rangefinder, bathed in black soot. So they aimed by eye. Good as the crews on her eight open-mount five-inch guns were, they were shocked to find that their ammunition was of little use. Their first salvo arced skyward right into the midst of the bombers. But only one of the four rounds was seen to explode. That sorry proportion held up through the day. Of the four hundred odd antiaircraft shells the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e's crews fired, nearly three hundred were duds. In the prewar years, the Navy Department, mindful of costs, had refused to let its ships fire live rounds in antiaircraft gunnery drills. The \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e's gunnery officer had appealed time and again for permission to use live ammunition but was turned down. The projectiles thus saved had been left to sit and age in the magazines. Now, as the realization dawned on them that most of their stored projectiles were little more than outsize paperweights, the antiaircraft crews became \"mad as scalded dogs\" and fired all the faster, if to little result.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring the bombardment that rained down on them that morning, the light cruiser \u003ci\u003eMarblehead\u003c\/i\u003e was straddled perfectly by a stick of seven bombs, engulfing the old ship in giant splashes. Two struck home, and a near miss, detonating underwater close aboard to port, did as much damage as the direct hits. Fifteen men were killed as fires raged fore and aft. With part of her hull dished in, scooping in seawater at high pressure, seams and rivets leaking, the \u003ci\u003eMarblehead\u003c\/i\u003e listed to starboard, settling by the head, her rudder jammed into a hard port turn. Seeing her distress, Captain Rooks turned the \u003ci\u003eHouston\u003c\/i\u003e toward her to bring his gunners to bear on the attackers. As he did so, another V of bombers passed overhead at fifteen thousand feet. A second flock of bombs wobbled earthward. They missed–all of them except for the stray.","brand":"Bantam","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300609904869,"sku":"NP9780553384505","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553384505.jpg?v=1767736547","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/ship-of-ghosts-isbn-9780553384505","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}