11 MARCH 1903 GERMANY’S INVASION PLANS In the last decades of the 19th century the United States and Germany had several brushes, the most serious occurring during the Spanish-American War. VADM Otto von Diederichs’ Imperial German Asiatic flotilla appeared in Manila 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
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
7 DECEMBER 1941 DETERMINATION vs. COMPLACENCY Japan emerged from the First World War as a bona fide naval power, a rival to US primacy in the Pacific. And as early as 1918, Imperial Defense Policy identified the United States as her Read More
24 NOVEMBER 1992 US DEPARTS THE PHILIPPINES The presence of American military bases in the Philippines was a consequence of our acquisition of that archipelago in 1898 after the Spanish-American war. When independence was granted to the Republic of the Philippines Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 31 AUGUST 1812 THE MISSING HUSBAND Not even three months had passed since war was declared against England in 1812. Both the US Army and the US Navy were filling their ranks for the fight. A Read More
27 AUGUST 1928 KELLOGG-BRIAND PACT World War I left a scar on the psyche of the Western hemisphere. Northern France was left a moonscape of stripped forests, ghost villages, and farmland rendered permanently useless by unexploded ordnance. The 117,000 American fighting Read More
25 JULY 1956 LIONS, CUBS, AND NAS CUBI POINT WWII’s clouds were gathering in the late 1930s, and it was increasingly recognized that existing naval bases along our Atlantic and Pacific seaboards would be inadequate to fully support operations thousands of Read More
7 APRIL 1954 THE DOMINO THEORY In March 1938, (then) LCOL Dwight D. Eisenhower watched Hitler convince the Austrians to join an Anschluss (alliance) with Nazi Germany. Seven months later Hitler annexed the Sudetenland (eastern Czechoslovakia). The whole of Czechoslovakia fell Read More
31 MARCH 1917 THE VIRGIN ISLANDS World War I had been tearing Europe apart since the summer of 1914. Here, we struggled to stay neutral, despite the sinkings of American merchant ships carrying cargoes to the Allies. To most Americans, WWI Read More