6 JULY 1960 PROJECT VIGILANT On 16 May 1960, in response to the Soviet shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spyplane, Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on a United Nations lectern vowing, “We will bury you!” The USSR was now Read More
18-20 MAY 1863 THE YAZOO CITY SHIPYARD After the failure of the Yazoo Pass expedition before Confederate Fort Pemberton in March 1863, MGEN Ulysses Grant adopted a new strategy against Vicksburg, the last and most menacing Rebel city preventing Union control Read More
SPRING 1898 FORT JEFFERSON–GIBRALTAR OF THE GULF Sixty-eight miles west of Key West, Florida, lies a cluster of small islands named for the turtles early sailors harvested there. The Dry Tortugas were notable in the 19th century because they lay athwart Read More
19 APRIL 1861 THE “ANACONDA” PLAN At the outbreak of the Civil War the senior-most officer in our federal Army was GEN Winfield Scott, the victor of the Mexican War of the 1840s. As an overall strategy to deal with the Read More
13 MARCH 1865 SKIRMISH AT FORT LOWRY We are familiar with inspiring stories of epic battles and heroic sailors, but the day-to-day operations of Civil War gunboats were often less dramatic. The Potomac Flotilla, tasked with protecting Washington, DC, and the Read More
10-11 FEBRUARY 1862 BATTLE OF ELIZABETH CITY (cont. from 8 FEB) Union forces from the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron had driven a Confederate “mosquito fleet” from Roanoke Island, and at 1430 on the afternoon of February 9th, CDR Stephen C. Rowan Read More
7-8 FEBRUARY 1862 CAPTURE OF ROANOKE ISLAND Fortress Monroe, situated at the entrance to Hampton Roads, was one of three forts south of the Mason-Dixon Line that remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War. Confederate lines of communication were thus Read More
11 JANUARY 1863 TROUBLE AT LOCKWOOD FOLLY INLET Lockwood Folly Inlet is a two-mile-wide break in the North Carolina coast south of Cape Fear. It provides access to the Intercoastal Waterway and the Lockwood Folly River. Its sand bars shift, making Read More
21 DECEMBER 1863 BLOCKADE RUNNING The effect of Lincoln’s naval blockade of the Confederacy was starting to tell by the end of 1861, as cotton and tobacco began piling up on southern wharves. Unable to move their major exports, the agrarian Read More