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
27 DECEMBER 1917 USS SANTEE Even before the United States entered WWI, our Navy was assisting the British in combating Kaiser Wilhelm II’s U-boats. This effort intensified after US entry in June 1917. At the time, targets for the U-boats were Read More
18-20 DECEMBER 1944 MONAGHAN vs. THE TEMPEST The Pacific war was a long one for USS MONAGHAN (DD-354). She was the ready destroyer at Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941 and was just getting underway to investigate a Read More
13 DECEMBER 1975 USS ALBANY COLLISION The catastrophic collision of the container ship Dali with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on 26 March 2024 is by no means the only time such an event has occurred. Indeed, on this date 50 years Read More
7-8 DECEMBER 1941 WHERE WERE THE CARRIERS? Most everyone will recall that one significant shortcoming of the Pearl Harbor raid from the Japanese perspective was its failure to destroy the American Navy’s aircraft carriers. Yamamoto had targeted them in particular, appreciating Read More