The intimate view of the U.S. Coast Guard's dramatic World War II record has long been considered a classic. First published in 1957 and out of print for years, the book is now available in paperback. Handsomely illustrated with more than two hundred photographs, the book serves as a unique memento of one of the most illustrious periods in the Coast Guard's two hundred year history. The author offers a story replete with incidents of devotion far beyond the call of duty--daring rescues, adventurous high-sea missions, heroic combat action--to clearly demonstrate the vital role the service played in the Allied war effort. A seasoned World War I veteran who joined the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve in 1942, Malcolm Willoughby has covered every aspect of the Coast Guard's involvement in the war at sea, in the air, and at home. From the invasion of Normandy, where Coast Guardsmen landed thousands of Americans and rescued some 1,500 stranded in the surf, to Guadalcanal, where they rescued three companies of Marines trapped on the beach, this chronicle vividly recounts these well-documented operations and little-known stories of individual triumphs and tragedies as well.

At home and overseas, the United States Coast Guard served a variety of vital functions in World War II, providing service that has been too little recognized in histories of the war. Teaming up with other international forces, the Coast Guard provided crewmembers for Navy and Army vessels as well as its own, carried troops, food, and military supplies overseas, and landed Marine and Army units on distant and dangerous shores. This thorough history details those and other important missions, which included combat engagement with submarines and kamikaze planes, and typhoons. On the home front, port security missions involving search and rescue, fire fighting, explosives, espionage and sabotage presented their own unique dangers and challenges.

This book, the second in the "Fighting ships of World War Two" series, contains reference information about all fighting ships and boats of United States Navy and United States Coast Guard, served, built or ordered in days of the Second World War. Articles contain information about designing, building and service of all ships and their technical data and modernization. Texts are accompanied by many photos and side view drawings. The book also contains information about organization of US Navy and US Coast Guard, USN ship-based airplanes and naval weapons.

Through eyewitness accounts based on hundreds of interviews with crew members; personal diaries, notes, and letters; and each cutter's logbooks and patrol reports Walling plunges you into the thick of the battle, re-creating some of the most desperate encounters, heroic rescues, and harrowing missions of the Second World War. Told largely in the voices of the men who lived it, this unforgettable tale is peppered with humorous and ironic anecdotes about life aboard ship during wartime. You'll meet the liberty-craving crew members who painted their entire ship in less than an hour; the ship's mascot who became canine-non-grata in Greenland; and the crew whose vessel was mistaken for the German battleship Bismarck and attacked by the Royal Navy. Complete with dramatic photographs of the Coast Guard in action, Bloodstained Sea brings this epic drama to vibrant and pulsing life.

Alex de Quesada reveals the full history of the US Coast Guard throughout World War II in this Elite title. In particular, the book draws attention to the little-known story of how the US Coast Guard ran a number of the landing craft throughout D-Day in 1944 as well as providing crucial anti-U-boat patrols throughout the war years. A number of Coast Guard servicemen were lost in these two campaigns, and their undeniable contribution to the US war effort deserves greater recognition. The Coast Guard also provided aviators and gunners to the Merchant Marine and manned Port Security Services. These roles are all fully explained and illustrated with rare photographs and specially commissioned artwork.

During World War II, the U.S. military lost some 35,000 aircraft to enemy action, training incidents, typhoons, aircraft carrier deck mishaps, mechanical failures or just normal wear-and-tear where aircraft were scrapped and used for parts to keep others flying. Many just failed to return from their missions. To date, the 15,069 aircraft represented in this 3-volume set is information initially transferred from hand-written "Aircraft History Cards" and are the total number of U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard aircraft lost between 7 December 1941 and 15 August 1945, and lost outside the continental United States (CONUS). Volume I represents the information on any aircraft lost that was attached to the 197 different ships in the database. Given the thousands of hours that went into this effort, the author hopes that, as a 3-volume set of reference books, it provides assistance to others who are researching ship, squadron and aircraft histories.

This collection of essays, written by some of the foremost historians in the field of Coast Guard history, highlights the wartime roles played by the United States’ oldest federal maritime service, from its inception through the last decade of the twentieth century. The Fighting Coast Guard features three distinct sections: “Beginnings,” which includes a short overview of the US Revenue Cutter Service (the USCG’s primary forerunner, established in 1790) and two chapters on World War I; “Conflagration,” the role of the USCG during the World War II era; and “The Cold War and Beyond,” an assessment of the Coast Guard’s participation in the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The Fighting Coast Guard is a significant contribution to the limited historiography of the Coast Guard and a critical analysis of various wartime roles undertaken by the Coast Guard during America’s twentieth-century conflicts. Because the Coast Guard operated as part of the Department of the Navy during the two world wars, its service and history is often overlooked or envoloped by the larger service, while the USCG’s limited participation in cold and hot wars since 1945 is often ignored altogether. This anthology provides readers with a solid overview while highlighting some of the service’s most important contributions as a combatant force. This definitive study of the role of the US Coast Guard in wartime, from its modern inception in 1915 through the end of the twentieth century, is long overdue and will shed new light on America’s smallest military service.