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Nov 1, 2024 | 
usni.org | J. M. Caiella
Great Britain’s famed Sopwith 1F.1 Camel of World War I was a fearsome aircraft not only to its enemies but also to its pilots. Because of and despite this, it was the most successful aerial fighter of the war. The plane shot down 1,543 enemy aircraft—a tally not equaled by any other type. The 1F.1’s great strength was its ability to turn quickly—some pilots claimed it could reverse its flight within twice the length of its stubby 18-foot, 6-inch fuselage.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
usni.org | J. M. Caiella |Andrew Blackley |Eric L. Mills |Martin J. Bollinger
By Admiral Worth H. Bagley, U.S. Navy (Retired), and Admiral Harold E. Shear, U.S. Navy (Retired) December 2024 Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. served as an innovative Chief of Naval Operations from 1970 to 1974. His actions elicited praise on one hand and criticism on the other.
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Sep 1, 2024 | 
usni.org | J. M. Caiella |BJ Armstrong |Eric L. Mills |James Young
On the 80th anniversary of the 1944 explosion at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro fully exonerated the African American sailors who were court-martialed. At the outset of an occupation of the Philippines that would last for decades, U.S. personnel took control of the Spanish gunboat Panay. It was beneath an October sky that the swan song of the Imperial Japanese Navy could be heard at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
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Sep 1, 2024 | 
usni.org | J. M. Caiella |Norman Polmar
From 1923 to 1938, one aircraft defined U.S. military aviation during the so-called Golden Age of flight. The Curtiss Hawk dominated the era, with Navy, Marine Corps, and U.S. Army Air Corps units flying 410 of the aircraft in various versions. The Hawk started as a private venture in 1922 to fill a void the military did not foresee. Glenn H.
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Aug 31, 2024 | 
usni.org | BJ Armstrong |Andrew Blackley |J. M. Caiella
Commodore George Dewey defeated a Spanish squadron at Manila Bay in May 1898, early in the Spanish-American War. A few months later, U.S. Army forces under Major General Elwell S. Otis took control of the Philippine city. Most of the Spanish squadron had been sunk by the American Asiatic Squadron or scuttled in the battle’s closing moments as Spaniards abandoned ship.
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Aug 1, 2024 | 
usni.org | Andrew Blackley |BJ Armstrong |J. M. Caiella
She is a double-elliptical, high-uffen-buffen, double turreted, back acting, submarine War junk. . . . She is about the shape of a sweet potato that has burst in the boiling. She draws fourteen feet of mud forward, 16’-6” of slime aft, and has three feet of discolored water over the main deck in fair weather.” That is how Lieutenant William S.
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Jun 30, 2024 | 
usni.org | J. M. Caiella |Andrew Blackley |Eric L. Mills |Jeff Vandenengel
Ed Offley was named the 2023 Naval History Author of the Year at the 151st Annual Meeting of the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Maryland, on 8 May. Fifteen years before the Vought F4U Corsair cemented its name in history over the Pacific Ocean in World War II, the original Corsair earned its own significant place in the ... The “Cradle of the Confederacy” was always going to be a tough nut to crack, but for Rear Admiral John Dahlgren, losing one chief of staff after another made matters ...
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Jun 30, 2024 | 
usni.org | J. M. Caiella |Norman Polmar
Fifteen years before the Vought F4U Corsair cemented its name in history over the Pacific Ocean in World War II, the original Corsair earned its own significant place in the annals of naval aviation over Nicaragua. Built around the then–newly available Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine, the first Corsair was a two-seat observation biplane equipped with three .30-caliber machine guns, one fixed and two mounted on a flexible Scarff ring. It also had one of the first all–steel tube fuselage structures.
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Apr 30, 2024 | 
usni.org | BJ Armstrong |J. M. Caiella |Eric L. Mills |Chris Hemler
More on the Possible Monitor Revelation Jim Caiella In his “A New Look for an Old Icon,” Francis DuCoin makes an interesting argument for a view of the ironclad USS ... It did not take long for the weaponeers to come up with a cost-effective solution to this gunboat threat: rapid-firing small-caliber guns with enough hitting power and range to cripple ...
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Apr 30, 2024 | 
usni.org | J. M. Caiella |Norman Polmar
Mr. Caiella is a journalist of more than 45 years with experience as a photographer, editor, writer, designer, and graphic artist. He has worked as lead editor of scholarly publications for the Naval History and Heritage Command, senior editor of Proceedings and Naval History magazines, and writer-editor for the U.S. Marine Corps’ History Division.
