Naval History Blog

Commander William C. McCool, USN gave his life on 1 February 2003 while piloting Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-107. Foam from the external fuel tank broke off and struck the shuttle’s left-wing during take-off. The seemingly minor damage led to the shuttle’s disintegration during reentry over two weeks later. McCool has several schools, tracks, parks, and buildings named in his honor. There are even memorials to him spread across the solar system. There is Asteroid 51829 Williemccool and McCool hill on Mars. One of the most personal memorials, however, resides on the U.S. Naval Academy Cross Country Course in Annapolis,… Read the rest of this entry »

I received an email this morning from a Naval Institute friend that I wanted to share about a new memorial which is replacing an old one. In part, the email read: During World War II, on April 23, 1945, the USS Eagle 56 was sunk by a German submarine about five miles off the coast of Cape Elizabeth. 49 sailors were killed in action; 13 survived. A memorial is currently located at Fort Williams Park to the right of the lighthouse, when facing the water, between the two binoculars. On November 21, 2019 Steve Lyons, Cape Elizabeth, and Paul Lawton, Naval… Read the rest of this entry »

Each year on Memorial Day, we stop to remember the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives for this nation. This year we share a story over 150 years in the making from the May 2013 issue of Naval History. After years of forensic and genealogical research, the remains of two Monitor sailors who went down with their ship more than a century and a half ago were laid to rest. Early on 31 December 1862, the pride of the U.S. Navy, the Monitor, was about to die. For several hours, her crew fought to keep the ship afloat… Read the rest of this entry »

Lieutenant Leroy Fadem recently revisited sites in the Pacific where he saw action in the Navy during the tumultuous years of the War in the Pacific over 70 years ago. This is a journal of that recent trip as kept by his son, Steven Fadem, who accompanied Lt. Fadem on that journey of rediscovery. I awoke in the dark, the victim of a telemarketing call at 4:47am from, ironically, an alleged veteran’s association in the States. I could not fall back asleep and so decided watch the dawn’s blue-gray fingers creep across the horizon. As the sky lightened I saw… Read the rest of this entry »

On 6 April 1917, the USS Olympia (C-6) was in transit, sailing from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands to Hampton Roads, Virginia. A gale was blowing from the southwest and the ship had to be secured for heavy weather. It was also the day Congress declared war against Germany. For the next nineteen months, USS Olympia sailors assisted with U.S. war efforts by participating in convoy patrols in the North Atlantic. The day that the Armistice was signed the ship was in Murmansk, Russia and a portion of her crew had spent the previous few months on land fighting the Bolsheviks.1… Read the rest of this entry »

While we recall the wreck of the USS Memphis (ACR-10) which occurred on August 29, 1916 killing 43 crew members, let’s remember a lesser known tragedy that occurred aboard the ship when she was known by her original name, Tennessee.   Inscription: George Wood (-1908) Watertender U.S. A Reinhold (-1908) M.M. 2.C. S. W. Meek (-1908) F. 1.C. E. C. Boccs (-1908)F. 2.C. F. S. Maxfield (-1908)F. 2.C. J. P. A. Carroll (-1908)F. 2.C. E. J. Burns (-1908) C.P. Died Heroically at Their Stations, In Line of Duty, USS Tennessee (ACR-10), June, 1908, Erected by Shipmates

On Memorial Day, it is important to reflect on the soldiers, sailors and airmen that have kept the U.S. safe. Each of us on that day should reserve simple, single moments of reverence—spots of time, as Wordsworth called them—that allow us to look back and reflect on lives lived and moments lost. For most of the 20th century, regardless of what our political stripes were, Americans stood as one when it came to the military and its role as our country’s protector. That changed during the Vietnam era, when our political and military leaders systematically deceived the American public about… Read the rest of this entry »

The ornate, allegorical Tripoli Monument is a memorial to six U.S. naval officers’ ultimate sacrifice during the Barbary War. On the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy, sandwiched between Leahy Hall and Preble Hall, lies an unlikely looking military memorial. Its elaborate, asymmetrical appearance, however, belies its rich martial past. In fact, the white marble statuary is the United States’ oldest military monument, built to commemorate the supreme sacrifice of U.S. naval officers during the Barbary War against Tripoli and originally funded by their fellow officers. The monument was the idea of David Porter, who would rise to become a… Read the rest of this entry »