Naval History Blog

Paging through Naval Institute’s photo archive, one can come across some unexpected and surprising images — ones where you know there has to be some sort of story behind them. Such is the case of the image featured here. The unusual scene shows the Italian airship M.6 floating over the upturned hull of the sunken battleship Leonardo da Vinci with an angle indicator attached to her rudder. How did such a bizarre scene come about? The story is recounted in a 1921 Proceedings article by Lieut. Colonel A. Guidoni of the Italian Navy, in which is excerpted here below: “The night… Read the rest of this entry »

Today marks the 53rd anniversary of the formal opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway to seagoing ships. The Seaway is a 2,432 mile long international waterway consisting of a system of canals, dams, and locks. It provides passage for large oceangoing vessels into central North America, and has created a fourth seacoast accessible to the industrial and agricultural heartland of North America. To celebrate the opening of the Seaway, President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II, along with twenty-eight Naval vessels, cruised from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. 1,040 midshipmen, including the entire third class of midshipmen at the Naval… Read the rest of this entry »

June 21st 1945   Okinawa declared secure after the most costly Naval Campaign in history. U.S. had 30 ships sunk, 233 damaged (mostly from Kamikaze attacks), 5000 dead & 5000 wounded. In November 1957, Proceedings published an article by Commander J. Davis Scott of the U.S. Naval Reserve, about a rescued aviator’s extraordinary experience aboard a destroyer during an attack by Japanese planes. The article, which was written on the USS Bennington while it was a member of Task Force 58 off Okinawa, is prefaced with the following note: For more than ten years this has been an untold story. Written… Read the rest of this entry »

May, 31 1900 Sailors and Marines from USS Newark and USS Oregon arrive at Peking (Beijing), China with other Sailors and Marines from Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy and Japan to protect U.S. and foreign diplomatic legations from the Boxers. The Boxers, or Righteous Harmony Society, was a proto-nationalist movement that rose up in China between 1898 and 1901, opposing Western imperialism and Christianity. The following is an excerpt from the article Experiences during the Boxer Rebellion by Captain J.K. Taussig USN published in Proceedings April, 1927. The Boxers, it should be understood, were a patriotic organization formed for… Read the rest of this entry »

May, 14 1836 A U.S. Exploring Expedition was authorized to conduct exploration of Pacific Ocean and South Seas. This was the first major scientific expedition overseas by the United States. LT Charles Wilkes USN, led the expedition in surveying South America, Antarctica, Far East, and North Pacific.

April, 14th 1912 RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank at 2:20 in the morning, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people.

The Bolshevik seizure of power following the 1917 October Revolution plunged Russia into a protracted and bloody civil war. The Civil War’s destabilizing affects led to an international intervention. Among this international group were Great Britain, France, Japan, China, and the United States. Between 1918 and 1920, the allied powers deployed military expeditions to major Russian ports to protect allied citizens and support anti-communist forces. One place where the United States Navy and Marine Corps participated in this effort was the Siberian port of Vladivostok, where U.S.S. Brooklyn under Rear Admiral Austin M. Knight was stationed in order to protect… Read the rest of this entry »

Ten years ago, Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig reflected on the terrorist attack on the USS Cole. Today we remember and honor the crew with his words, written in his Proceedings magazine article, “America Loves Its Citizens”: “Mr. Secretary, we will save this ship. We will repair this ship. We will take this ship home, and we will sail this ship again to sea.” One of the reasons that I love America is because it loves its citizens. In other times, and on this very day in other places, people are regarded as means and not ends, as fodder,… Read the rest of this entry »