“From the Halls of Montezuma…”

                                             13 SEPTEMBER 1847                             “FROM THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA…” By this date in the 17-month-old war with Mexico, the United States had gained control of California from San Francisco to Los Cabos in southern Baja.  But complete victory in the war required Read More

Devil’s Elbow Disaster

                                              8 SEPTEMBER 1923                                        DEVIL’S ELBOW DISASTER On the map of California one will notice a prominence north of Santa Barbara at which the coast takes a sharp turn to head nearly east/west for 80 miles.  This prominence, bounded by Point Arguello Read More

Pilot Down!

                                              2 SEPTEMBER 1944                                                   PILOT DOWN! By September of 1944 the Allied advance across the Pacific reached the Bonin Islands, an 1800-mile-long chain that includes Iwo Jima.  At 0715 this morning, a squadron of Grumman TBF Avengers took off from USS SAN Read More

Rescue at Sea

                                                30 AUGUST 1993                                                 RESCUE AT SEA Just after midnight 31 August 1993 a chopper from NAS North Island set down on Naval Medical Center San Diego’s pad to offload a patient, Eugene P. Scheller.  Mr. Scheller, the Chief Engineer on the Read More

Intercepting the Mega-Guns

                                                26 AUGUST 1863                                  INTERCEPTING THE MEGA-GUNS When South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter to start the Civil War, all but one of the foundries in the United States were in the North.  Only the Tredeger Iron Works in Richmond could bore Read More

USS DOLPHIN vs. Echo

                                                21 AUGUST 1858                                           USS DOLPHIN vs. ECHO Despite human slavery being a way of life in the antebellum American south, official US policy forbade trafficking in slaves as early as 1807.  On 3 March 1819 Congress granted President James Monroe the Read More

The Passing of Farragut

                                                14 AUGUST 1870                                      THE PASSING OF FARRAGUT It is hard to overstate the reverence our Navy holds for David Glasgow Farragut.  He entered our Navy at age 9 through the influence of his adoptive father, CAPT David Porter, in 1810.  He Read More

USS JARVIS

                                                 9 AUGUST 1942                                                      USS JARVIS The morning of August 7th, 1942, saw the US Marines make their first landings on Japanese held Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain.  The enemy counter attacked with airstrikes, the second coming around noon on the Read More

USS WEASEL vs. Gallago Segunda (cont. from 22 JUL)

                                            200th ANNIVERSARY                                                  3 AUGUST 1823                 USS WEASEL vs. GALLAGO SEGUNDA (cont. from 22 JUL) Continental and US Navy warships had been cruising the Caribbean Sea since the earliest days of our Revolutionary War.  Their initial mission was to suppress British Read More

Saltonstall at Penobscot (cont. from 25 JUL)

                                                19 JULY-17 AUGUST 1779                                    SALTONSTALL AT PENOBSCOT Four hundred Continental and colonial Marines led the numerically superior American assault, clamoring up the cliff to within 600 yards of the fort.  But here they came within range of the three small Read More