Navy War Heroes #5

A UDT demolitions specialist recalls his harrowing missions with Ensign Henry Manx during the European campaign—from triggering Nazi mines off Normandy to sabotaging German installations near Cherbourg, and now preparing for a dangerous new operation on the French coast. When the Ensign volunteers the team for yet another high-stakes assignment, our narrator finds himself facing his most audacious task yet: blocking a heavily patrolled harbor using the enemy's own explosives. This 1964 war tale captures the dark humor and razor-thin margins between survival and sacrifice that defined the UDT's work in World War II.

A U.S. Navy task unit—led by the battleships Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin—targets Japan's steel production in a midnight bombardment of the Nihon Steel Company and Wanishi Ironworks at Muroran on July 16, 1945. Firing a record number of 16-inch shells at maximum range, the fleet achieves devastating accuracy, crippling both the factory's output and its power supply. This strike becomes one of the pivotal operations that hastens Japan's surrender just weeks later.

Steve Mikan, a Navy petty officer, volunteers for a dangerous shore mission to direct massive naval gunfire on a Korean coastal target and save a trapped Marine battalion. When a Chinese Communist patrol discovers the fire-control team's position, Mikan finds himself the sole survivor standing amid exploding shells, radioing coordinates while the fleet's firepower rains down around him. His steady hand and courage under fire become the difference between victory and disaster.

When a submarine damaged in a raid on Rabaul rests on the ocean floor with twelve survivors trapped inside, Lt. Russ Holman and his underwater-demolition team face an impossible choice: destroy the vessel as ordered, or find a way to save the men still alive below. A captured Japanese patrol plane and quick thinking become Holman's unlikely tools in this tense race against time and enemy patrols off the Japanese-held shore.