15-18 OCTOBER 1942 USS MEREDITH, DD-434 The Gleaves-class destroyer USS MEREDITH (DD-434) was no stranger to the young War. After a brief stint in the Atlantic, MEREDITH transferred to the Pacific, where in April 1942 she screened HORNET (CV-8) on the Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 10 OCTOBER 1913 THE PANAMA CANAL At 1401 this afternoon, in a media event, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button in the Executive Building of downtown Washington DC. Two thousand miles to the south, dynamite charges Read More
2-4 OCTOBER 1912 THE CHARGE UP COYOTEPE The US Marines had been in Nicaragua off and on since December 1909, each time to quell civil unrest and prop-up conservative pro-American governments. In this latest foray, the administration of Adolfo Díaz had Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 27-28 SEPTEMBER 1066 THE MIRACULOUS CROSSING For the first week of January in the year 1066, King Edward the Confessor of England agonized on his death bed. A sudden apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage) caused lapses in and Read More
20 SEPTEMBER 1776 PROVIDENCE vs. MILFORD On 10 May 1776, temporary CAPT John Paul Jones assumed command of the Continental Navy sloop Providence, armed with twelve 4-pounder guns. Jones received his permanent appointment on August 8th and departed the Delaware Capes Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 11 SEPTEMBER 1814 ACTION AT THE NORTHERN END The heavyweights concentrated at the northern end of the battle line. Here the headforemost approach of CAPT George Downie in the British flagship CONFIANCE, 37, allowed SARATOGA and Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 11 SEPTEMBER 1814 ACTION AT THE SOUTHERN END As MacDonough had correctly anticipated, HMS FINCH, 11, could not sail close enough to the wind to approach the southern American line. In falling to leeward however, she Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 11 SEPTEMBER 1814 BATTLE OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN To the British, our War of 1812 was only a distant theater of a more global war against Napoleonic France. And the defeat of Napoleon at Toulouse and his Read More
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY 4 SEPTEMBER 1887 RADM GEORGE BROWN On the moonless night of 14-15 February 1863, 27-year-old LCDR George Brown of the Union Navy’s Mississippi River Squadron took the sidewheel ironclad gunboat USS INDIANOLA south toward Vicksburg. His Read More
30 AUGUST-20 SEPTEMBER 1995 OPERATION “DELIBERATE FORCE” The Balkan cease fire brokered by former President Jimmy Carter in 1994 had failed. United Nations’ efforts at peacekeeping in the war-torn former Yugoslavian republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina had given way to NATO and its Read More