17-18 FEBRUARY 1944 OPERATION “HAILSTORM” Truk (now Chuuk) along with Yap, Pohnpei, and Korsae, comprise the Federated States of Micronesia in the South Pacific. An encircling reef forms Chuuk’s outer perimeter, creating a large, sheltered lagoon 40 miles in diameter that Read More
13 FEBRUARY 1917 SOMEONE HAD TO BE FIRST The seaplane was essential to our Navy and Marine Corps in the earliest days of military aviation. With the aircraft carrier years away from reality, planes operating from ships at sea needed to Read More
9 FEBRUARY 1945 OPERATION “CAESAR” On 5 December 1944 the Type IX long-range U-boat U-864 departed Kiel, northern Germany, for Penang, Indochina (modern Malaysia). The Japanese coveted German jet aircraft technology and U-864’s mission was to transport Messerschmitt “Swallow” jet engine Read More
4-5 FEBRUARY 1864 USS SASSACUS vs. NUTFIELD Blockade running was a complicated pursuit even for the most skilled of seamen. European goods were shipped to staging points in Bermuda, the Bahamas, or the Caribbean. Here, smaller, sleek, fast ships would load Read More
26 January 2019 Zumwalt-Class Destroyers The Gulf War of 1990-91 saw the last deployment of our vaunted WWII-era battleships—in naval gunfire support for ground operations ashore. By then, the cost of maintaining our battleship fleet had become prohibitive. Yet Congress was keen Read More
21 JANUARY 1836 THE BLOCKADE OF FLORIDA Seminole Indians, angered over President Andrew Jackson’s plan for their relocation to the Oklahoma Indian Territory, rose up on 28 December 1835 and attacked a column of Army troops under MAJ Francis L. Dade Read More
15 JANUARY 1865 USS PATAPSCO The Rebel-controlled guns of Forts Sumter, Moultrie, and Johnson straddling the entrance to Charleston harbor anchored the Confederate defenses in the late Civil War. The mouth of the harbor and the entrance channel were obstructed with Read More
7 JANUARY 1945 THEODORE EDSON CHANDLER Theodore Edson Chandler was born at Annapolis on 26 December 1894 into a distinguished Navy family. His father, the future RADM Lloyd H. Chandler, attended the Naval Academy at the time. Young Chandler followed in Read More
3 JANUARY 1908 CROSSING THE LINE On 29 December 1907, after their first coaling stop in Trinidad, the Atlantic Battleship Fleet, nicknamed “the Great White Fleet,” weighed anchor and headed south on their epic world cruise. Five days later off Macapa, Read More