Tin Cans and Greyhounds ― The Destroyers That Won Two World Wars

This action-packed narrative history of destroyer-class ships begins with destroyers' first incarnation as torpedo boats in 1898 through the last true combat service of the ships in the Vietnam War. Nicknamed "tin cans" or "greyhounds," destroyers were quick naval ships used to defend larger battleships—and they proved indispensable in America's military victories. In Tin Cans and Greyhounds, author Clint Johnson brings readers inside the quarter-inch hulls of destroyers to meet the men who manned the ships' five-inch guns and fought America's wars from inside a "tin can"—risking death by cannon shell, shrapnel, bomb, fire, drowning, exposure, and sharks.

Clint Johnson is an author and military historian whose books include The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South, Bull's-Eyes and Misfires: 50 Obscure People Whose Efforts Shaped the American Civil War, and Colonial America and the American Revolution.