Fightin' Navy #82

Captain Moose Beck commands the U.S. submarine Striper on a daring mission through the South China Sea, hunting Japanese shipping and outrunning enemy destroyers with nothing to spare—until fuel runs critically low and Beck devises a desperate gambit to raid a Japanese-controlled refinery in Thailand. When the crew hijacks a loaded tanker to refuel at sea, they find themselves racing against time and alerted Japanese forces to complete the transfer before the alarm brings enemy ships down on them.

Lieutenant Jim Bowden and his crew aboard PT 379 discover a Japanese landing in New Guinea harbor and must relay the critical intelligence to Allied command—but sending a radio report risks exposing their position to enemy direction finders. Racing against time to repair their engines and weighing their chances of survival, Bowden executes a desperate gambit that draws unexpected reinforcements to the fight.

Tim Rogers signed up for sea duty, but a persistent case of seasickness proves to be his biggest enemy when his LST convoy sets sail for the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944. As the ship endures enemy air attacks and the grueling Atlantic crossing, Rogers struggles to keep his station while battling nausea—only to discover that solid ground brings its own surprises. A wry wartime tale about a sailor who gets exactly what he wished for, with results that are both humbling and oddly comic.

When Lieutenant Harder deliberately crash-lands his plane in an occupied French port, he reunites with the imprisoned British crew of H.M.S. Gadfly—a legendary torpedo boat now held captive by the Germans. Armed with a French agent's diagram and nerves of steel, Harder orchestrates a daring midnight escape through the port's ancient passages, leading the crew back to their ship for a desperate bid to reclaim her and break free into open waters.

When the crew of the S.S. Stonewall emerges from heavy fog, exhaustion runs deep—so deep that a lurking Nazi U-boat goes unnoticed as it shadows the merchant vessel. Before dawn breaks, the undersea prowler surfaces to attack, and though the ship finds itself at the enemy's mercy, Shorty and his crewmates have other plans when the boarding party arrives. "Stonewall's Rebellion" is a taut five-page war tale where a tired crew's grit turns the tables on an enemy captain who believed surprise was already his.

In "El Presidente Jonsey," a frustrated naval officer longs for frontline duty—only to be posted to a quiet desk job in a South American capital. His new assignment is far from the front lines, but when a revolution erupts, even the most peaceful post becomes a battlefield.

A decommissioned supply vessel transformed into a weather patrol ship becomes an unwitting gathering point for Nazi U-boats in the North Atlantic—until Captain Leo Heston devises a daring plan to turn the tables. When a disguised faster ship replaces the original "Rust Bucket," Heston waits for the enemy wolf pack to assemble before unleashing a devastating surprise attack in "Deadly Rendezvous!"

Ensign Ted Barret arrives aboard the USS Yorktown in May 1942 plagued by self-doubt—he's got just six weeks of aerial gunnery training under his belt and worries he won't measure up when combat comes. When Lt. Comdr. Shaw's flight scrambles to intercept Japanese carriers at the Coral Sea, Barret must move past his fears fast, putting his piloting and marksmanship to the test against enemy Zeros and capital ships in one of the Navy's first hard-won victories of the Pacific War.

When a German U-boat sinks a fishing trawler without mercy, the boat's lone survivor vows revenge—and two months later, he gets his chance when the same submarine surfaces again. This time, he's waiting aboard a seemingly ordinary fishing boat, but hidden beneath deck is a Navy gun crew and a carefully laid trap. In "U-Boat Trap," a sailor's determination to settle a personal score intersects with wartime justice in this sharp 1958 tale from Fightin' Navy.

Hank Gibson, a tin can sailor who despises submarines, gets stranded on a Japanese-held island and must be rescued by the sub Silverfin—the last place he wants to be. When the Silverfin stumbles upon a Japanese fleet threatening an American convoy, Gibson discovers that his gunnery skills might be exactly what this underwater vessel needs in a desperate fight for survival. As enemy planes and ships close in, Gibson learns there's more to submarine warfare than he bargained for.

In 1943, a British task force launches a desperate raid to destroy Germany's formidable battleship Tirpitz, which has taken shelter deep within a heavily fortified Norwegian fiord. Three midget submarines creep through sixty miles of treacherous waters bristling with listening posts, minefields, and anti-torpedo nets, hoping to plant explosives on the ship's keel before the enemy can stop them. When one sub is detected and the crew forced to abandon their vessel, the race becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse as the British frogmen fight to complete their mission while their German captors close in.