From the good folks at the Naval Institute:
One of the all time great things about writing a blog is the mail one gets offline – some genuinely interesting stuff comes our way that we may have missed out on in the comings and goings of a standard day. The Flightdeck Fridays in particular generate more than their fair share of folks sharing…
(h/t to Southern Air Pirate for the topic suggestion) 29 April 1975. South Vietnam is ceasing to exist as a geopolitical entity – Saigon is falling. Under leaden skies, the assembled ships and aircraft of TF 76, headed by carriers Hancock and Midway begin executing Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of US personnel along with Vietnamese…
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…
At Marne, the industrial warfare hinted at barely half a century earlier came to fruition. On a sunny, December morning, the rules of naval warfare were inexorably altered and four years later was answered in the light of a terrible, new weapon, one that its creator was prompted to utter “I am become death, the…
Stan Stanley has assembled a remarkable site that lays out the little told story of the shore-det of VT-8 and the combat debut of the Grumman TBF Avenger: I have the privilege of knowing Harry Ferrier who was in Torpedo 8 and one of the two survivors of the six TBF’s which launched from Midway…
Reveille came early at 0400 for the A-7B pilots of a light attack squadron deployed aboard an attack carrier. Briefing was scheduled at 0445 with the first launch at 0600. Two of the four scheduled Corsair II’s completed the launch and, after the mission was completed, returned for an IFR recovery. The two pilots separated…
