Every so often, we as seagoers are reminded that the mundane may rapidly transform into the perilous, even without a human enemy. Such moments can bring out the best and worst in our nature. Twenty-one years ago today routine operations onboard the USS Bonefish (SS-582) and USS Carr (FFG 52) uderwent such a change. A…
June 5th: ” In every battle there is a moment when the combatants, and the world, seem to catch their breath. It is a fleeting moment, lost in the blink of an eye. But in that same blink, everything changes. Such moments are borne of desperation, of courage, of plain dumb luck. But they are…
First, go over to EagleSpeak and read this very excellent account of how the US came to be involved in the Pacific to begin with. Then come back for the Battle of the Coral Sea. – SJS Battle of the Coral Sea, 7-8 May 1942 –The Events of 7 May 1942 …
Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth. – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Book II Tucked away in the mountains of east-central North Korea, roughly 32 nm from the launch pad at Tae po-dong (or Musudan-ri) and 12 nm from the site of…
A quick history lesson. A quarter of a century ago, the US (and NATO) were engaged in an unprecedented nuclear arms build-up in Europe that was initiated with the deployment of the SS-20 Sabre (NATO)/RT-21M Pioneer (Russia) IRBM in 1976. Unlike the much older SS-4 and SS-5 IRBMs, employed in 1959 and 1961,…
In time, one of the ongoing “lessons RE-learned” has been/continues to be the need for a tough, heavily armed aircraft that is able to perform in close coordination with ground troops, in a high intensity, small-arms fire environment. Whether facing armored assault or insurgency attacks, through the years and myriad of conflicts, some aircraft have…
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Thanks.
SJ:
Huge gratitude for your work on this. First cold one’s on me! As a kid growing up in innocence in Coronado names like Ring, Thach, Laird and others were simply neighbors, friends of my parents or schoolmates. It wasn’t until much later that I realized who these people were!
The internet now has many wonderful interviews with many Midway participants, one which has caught my eye is from the viewpoint of one of the NAP’s from Yorktown:
http://www.internetmodeler.com/2002/june/aviation/Cheek.htm
Looking forward to more here and over on UNSI.
VR,
Andy
Besides good intel, bravery and skill, it was luck,luck,luck.l Gen. MacArthur used to greet every General to his command by asking: “Are you a lucky General?” As he old story goes, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” (Although it sure as hell helps to be both!)