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Flightdeck Friday: Apollo 11 Forty Years Later

20 July 1969 102:42:08 Duke: Roger. Copy. (Pause) Eagle, Houston. You’re Go for landing. Over. 102:42:13 Armstrong (on-board): Okay. 3000 at 70. 102:42:17 Aldrin: Roger. Understand. Go for landing. 3000 feet. 102:42:19 Duke: Copy. 102:42:19 Aldrin: Program Alarm. (Pause) 1201 102:42:24 Armstrong: 1201. (Pause) (On-board) Okay, 2000 at 50. 102:42:25 Duke: Roger. 1201 alarm. (Pause)…

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The Solomons Campaign: Status of the United States Fleet and Plans After Midway

This week marks the first of our Guest Bloggers for the Solomons Campaign blog project. The author is no stranger to this or several other milblogs – he is AT1(AW) Charles H. Berlemann, Jr. Hailing from the VAQ community, Charles is a student of naval history, particularly, naval aviation history and we have kept a…

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The Solomons Campaign: Geographical and Political Background

Like a broken strand of pearls, the Solomon Islands form an open and extended chain from the Santa Cruz Islands in the south-east to the larger islands of Bougainville and New Britain in the west.   Further to the south-east lie the New Hebrides.   The islands, primarily volcanic in origin with outer coral barriers,…

Independence Day

Breathes there a soul so dead that these words don’t send a chill through the spine? When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to…

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Flightdeck Friday (Independence Day Edition): B-17F Flight Log

Tomorrow we will have our Independence Day post up and in the busy comings goings of a three-day weekend, we encourage one and all to pause and ponder those words — mere words in some folks’ opinion; that our forefathers penned in Philadelphia that hot summer of 1776.  Men had already died in the cause…

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Linkages

6 June 1944: 6 June 2009: ARABIAN SEA (June 6, 2009) The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the guided-missile cruiser USS Vicksburg (CG 69), and the French Navy destroyer FS Forbin (D620) are conducting operations in the Arabian Sea. The Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility…

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Coming This Fall: The Solomon Islands Campaign

Shifting from defense to offense. Joint and combined operations – and all the hard lessons learned. Finding out that training, tactics and procedures can trump an opponent’s better technology – and more hard lessons learned. Surviving on the razor’s edge and prevailing. Innovate, adapt – overcome. All of this and more are gathered together in…