Flotsam, Jetsam, Royalties, and Buccaneers

                                                    9 JULY 1647                 FLOTSAM, JETSAM, ROYALTIES, AND BUCCANEERS The Eleutherian Adventurers included about a hundred English Puritan gentleman and their households who obtained in 1647 a land grant in the Bahamas from Oliver Cromwell’s Parliament.  Each member contributed £100 and signed Read More

Holiday Joyride

                                                    4 JULY 1986                                              HOLIDAY JOYRIDE LCPL Howard A. Foote, Jr., enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1984 with the hope of an enlisted commissioning and selection for flight training.  He was already an accomplished pilot at the time, having established several Read More

Victory at Charles Town

                                                  9-28 JUNE 1776 250th ANNIVERSARY                                     VICTORY AT CHARLES TOWN The British evacuation of Boston in 1775 turned their attentions to the southern American colonies.  To Anglican eyes, the origin of revolution in the northern mercantile colonies left the southern agrarian colonies Read More

Cold War Downing

                                                   22 JUNE 1955                                            COLD WAR DOWNING As the Cold War deepened and the United States became aware that the Soviets had developed their own atom bomb, we scrambled to install the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line of radar posts across northern Read More

Agents-Provocateur

                                                   17 JUNE 1942                                         AGENTS-PROVOCATEUR The waters off Ponte Vedra, Florida, were not particularly rough this dark evening of June 17th, 1942, certainly not enough to prevent four men from shuffling onto the deck of a German submarine.  They worked quietly inflating Read More

Women’s Armed Services Integration Act

                                                   12 JUNE 1948                     WOMEN’S ARMED SERVICES INTEGRATION ACT The roles open to women in our WWII Navy were limited.  The Navy Nurse Corps had been accepting women exclusively since 1908, and women had also entered service through the Navy and Marine Read More

Attack on Osiraq

                                                    7 JUNE 1981                                             ATTACK ON OSIRAQ Amos Yadlin dropped the nose of his heavily loaded F-16 straight down the “chute” out of the setting sun at 480 knots.  The 30-foot arching dome of Saddam Hussein’s nearly completed nuclear reactor Osiraq (a Read More

The “Plug-Uglies”

                                                    1 JUNE 1857                                             THE “PLUG-UGLIES” Few may remember today that the January 6th, 2021, Capitol riot was not the first violent threat against our election process.  The tempestuous 1857 Presidential campaign pitted the Democratic ticket of James Buchanan and John Breckinridge Read More

SS-192 (cont.)

                                                 23-25 MAY 1939                                                     SS-192 (cont.) It had been 26 hours since SQUALUS (SS-192) slipped below the waves off New Hampshire’s coast, only to be partially flooded and sink 240 feet below.  The McCann Rescue Chamber had arrived lashed to the fantail Read More

SS-192

                                                   23 MAY 1939                                                          SS-192 A commissioning ceremony occupied the docks at New Hampshire’s Portsmouth Navy Yard on 1 March 1939.  Our latest Sargo-class submarine, SQUALUS (SS-192), was entering service.  Her dock trials went well, except for a problem with closure of Read More