America's Sailors in the Great War

Seas, Skies, and Submarines

Lisle A. Rose

Narrated by Roger Bernier

Available from Audible

Book published by University of Missouri Press

This book is a thrillingly-written story of naval planes, boats, and submarines during World War I.

When the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, America’s sailors were immediately forced to engage in the utterly new realm of anti-submarine warfare waged on, below and above the seas by a variety of small ships and the new technology of airpower. The U.S. Navy substantially contributed to the safe trans-Atlantic passage of a two million man Army that decisively turned the tide of battle on the Western Front even as its battleship division helped the Royal Navy dominate the North Sea. Thoroughly professionalized, the Navy of 1917–18 laid the foundations for victory at sea twenty-five years later.

Lisle A. Rose has worked as a sailor, a professor, a diplomat, and a court-appointed special advocate for at-risk children. He has written more than a dozen books.

REVIEWS:

“America’s Sailors in the Great War is a fascinating revelation of life on and under the seas, in the pitiless North Atlantic and the waters surrounding the UK. Captain Lisle Rose makes clear that the success in moving massive quantities of war material, sustaining supplies, and millions of American troops to the fray resides in large measure on the extraordinary performance of seamen and ships, which did the grudging and hazardous convoy duty.”

—Admiral Tom Hayward, (retired) USN Former Chief of Naval Operations

“In recounting the U.S. Navy’s roles in World War I, Rose makes clear that the Americans were an important component to the ultimate victory, and that the experience laid the keel for the great Navy that would fight and win the next war where the stakes were even higher. Truly a vicariously edifying experience!”

—Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Naval Institute, U.S. Naval War College, author of A Sailor’s History of the U.S. Navy

“The author tells the story of how the U.S. Navy successfully re-invented itself from a navy built around a blue water battle fleet to a force whose main mission was antisubmarine warfare. Woven within this larger story are tales of sailors committed to the land and air battle on the Western Front.”

—The Journal of America’s Military Past

“Rose ‘gets it right,’ correctly including chasers in the account while avoiding hyperbole and not repeating the undocumented claims of earlier works.”

—Subchaser Archives Notes

“Conveys the unforgiving conditions of the North Atlantic to the reader as the sailors knew them. The author describes how World War I prepared the Navy for what it would have to do a generation later in World War II.”

—Military Heritage

“Rose touches on many subjects often overlooked, such as the lack of a credible naval air arm or the role of the Naval Militia in the mobilization of the fleet and describes how the service grew and adapted to make a vital contribution to the Allied cause. But he also does not hesitate to point out the limitations of the U.S. Navy, which had an unbalanced fleet and little understanding of the problems of the war at sea.”

—The NYMAS Review

“Achieves its aims of describing U.S. efforts in 1917-18 and evaluating their performance, which was generally superb.”

—Proceedings, a publication of the US Naval Institute

“An excellent introduction to the men and machines that so heroically completed the missions assigned to them.”

—The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord