Naval History Blog

Operation Stalemate II—the landing of the 1st Marine Division on Peleliu—began on 15 September 1944. Aircraft of Task Group 38.4 and four escort carriers of Carrier Unit One, Rear Admiral William D. Sample commanding, supported the Marines with bombing and strafing runs. The Japanese had prepared the main line of resistance inland from the beaches to escape naval bombardment, however, and three preceding days of carrier air attacks and intense naval gunfire had failed to suppress the well dug-in and tenacious defenders, who fiercely contested the island. The fleet carriers supported the landing until 18 September, and a total of… Read the rest of this entry »

By late spring 1941, with the war in Europe a year and a half old, Britain’s back was against the wall and Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt to send American troops to Iceland to replace the British Garrison there. Roosevelt agreed, and on 5 June directed the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold R. Stark, to have a Marine brigade ready to sail in 15 days’ time. The 6th Marine Regiment was diverted from joining the 1st Marine Division in the Caribbean, to Charleston to be the nucleus of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade. The brigade… Read the rest of this entry »

From the Marine Corps History Division… A debate persists as to what constituted the first hostile action for U.S. naval aviation (the earliest distinctions between Navy and Marine aviation were marginal). Some argue the scouting flights in the Veracruz action in 1914, in which Navy and Marine pilots participated, was the first occasion when naval aviation planes came under fire of an enemy. Two purported “bullet” holes were noticed on two different planes at different times. However, at least one of these holes was believed by the pilot to merely be the result of an errant screwdriver.  Whether the incident… Read the rest of this entry »

John Freeman Mackie was born on 1 October 1835 in New York City. Working there as a silversmith, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 24 April 1861. His first assignment was on the USS Savannah as part of the ship’s Marine Detachment. On 1 March 1862, Mackie was promoted to the rank of corporal and was assigned to the ironclad U.S.S. Galena under the command of Commander John Rodgers. On 15 May 1862, a small Union navy flotilla which included the Galena, Aroostook, Port Royal, Naugatuck and the famous USS Monitor attacked Confederate… Read the rest of this entry »

69 years ago today, the gallant defenders of Wake Island surrendered to a numerically superior Japanese force. 

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 »

The Navy’s 1983 report on the Beirut Marine Barracks bombing, including homecoming for the wounded, and a memorial for those killed.