Prologue: Reef points -- Appointment -- Plebe year -- Youngster cruise -- Youngsters -- Beat Army -- Firsties -- The real Navy -- The cusp of war -- Infamy -- Retribution -- U-boats, convoys, and matrimony -- The Coral Sea and Midway -- Savo Island -- Ironbottom Sound -- Flight training -- The Med -- Submarine warfare -- "Moored as before" -- Semper Fidelis -- The Atlantic again -- The Battle of Leyte Gulf -- Iwo Jima and Okinawa -- Culmination

"Annapolis Goes to War tells the story of young naval officers from the United States Naval Academy who graduated just as World War II began. Arriving at Annapolis as teenagers during Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland, they graduated the week the British army evacuated Dunkirk. More than a hundred were stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; ten perished that day, and seven remain entombed in the USS Arizona. Over the next four years, these former midshipmen participated in nearly every major battle in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, serving on battleships, submarines, aircraft carriers, and leading Marine Corps units ashore. Drawing from diaries, memoirs, and letters, the book captures their transformation through the war's trials and triumphs, offering a powerful account of sacrifice and growth"--