4 JULY 1986 HOLIDAY JOYRIDE LCPL Howard A. Foote, Jr., enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1984 with the hope of an enlisted commissioning and selection for flight training. He was already an accomplished pilot at the time, having established several Read More
12 JUNE 1948 WOMEN’S ARMED SERVICES INTEGRATION ACT The roles open to women in our WWII Navy were limited. The Navy Nurse Corps had been accepting women exclusively since 1908, and women had also entered service through the Navy and Marine Read More
7 JUNE 1981 ATTACK ON OSIRAQ Amos Yadlin dropped the nose of his heavily loaded F-16 straight down the “chute” out of the setting sun at 480 knots. The 30-foot arching dome of Saddam Hussein’s nearly completed nuclear reactor Osiraq (a 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
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
10-11 NOVEMBER 1975 50th ANNIVERSARY THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD (cont.) No Coast Guard vessel in the area was capable of braving such heavy seas this night, but an HU-16 “Albatross” and an HH-52 “Sea Guard” helicopter were launched. In addition, Anderson Read More
10 NOVEMBER 1975 50th ANNIVERSARY THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD When she slid off the ways in 1958, the 729-foot SS Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest man-made object ever to hit freshwater, indeed her size took Great Lakes freighting Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 24 OCTOBER-14 NOVEMBER 1995 THE LAST CRUISE OF DIXON At 1600 on the sunny Tuesday afternoon of 24 October 1995 the L.Y. Spear-class submarine tender USS DIXON (AS-37) cast off from middle pier at SubBase Point Read More
12 OCTOBER 2000 USS COLE BOMBING On January 3rd, 2000, the destroyer THE SULLIVANS (DDG-68) moored in the port of Aden, Yemen, for refueling. While her crew worked, unseen Al-Queda operatives pushed a small boat loaded with explosives into the harbor. But Read More
15 APRIL-31 OCTOBER 1980 MARIEL BOATLIFT The Cuban economy took a nosedive in the 1970s. Housing shortages and joblessness fueled popular dissent, yet Fidel Castro’s harsh restrictions on emigration appeared to condemn Cubans to a life of struggle. Faced with possible Read More