About Tin Cans & Greyhounds
Historian, Clint Johnson’s new book Tin Cans & Greyhounds: The Destroyers that Won Two World Wars (Regnery History), provides insight into the upcoming Tom Hanks’ movie, Greyhound (for release spring 2020), by revealing the real stories echoed in the film.
Tin Cans & Greyhounds is an action-packed narrative that gives readers a fresh perspective of the fight for victory in World War II, through the portholes of the destroyers that won the war.
Nicknamed “tin cans” for their thin, metal hulls that enabled them to swiftly navigate the seas to earn their other moniker, “greyhounds,” these ships were dangerous to man but vital to victory. Life on a destroyer required men to fight battles “against overwhelming odds from which survival could not be expected,” as World War II Rear Admiral Robert Copeland put it.
In Tin Cans & Greyhounds, Johnson brings readers inside the quarter-inch hulls of destroyers to meet the brave sailors who manned the ships’ 5″ guns and fought America’s wars from inside “tin cans”, risking death by:
- Cannon shell
- Shrapnel
- Fire
- Drowning
- Exposure
- Sharks
The most versatile ship on the seas, destroyers served as swift scouts, able escorts, and gutsy rescuers. Without their aid, WWII might have been lost. Tin Cans & Greyhounds details how destroyers fought submarines, escorted convoys, rescued sailors and airmen, downed aircraft, shelled beaches, and attacked armored battleships and cruisers with nothing more than a half-inch of steel separating their crews from the dark waves.
