Navy Proud: It’s in the blood

On the sixth of April 1917, the United States Congress declared war on Germany. The declaration came after the German government increased its belligerent actions against the United States. President Wilson who had campaigned on the strength that he had kept the US out of war from 1914 until that very moment had relented after […]

They Never Lost Their Will to Win–The Battle of Cape Esperance

The Battle of Cape Esperance, also known as the Second Battle of Savo Island and, in Japanese sources, as the Sea Battle of Savo Island, took place on 11–12 October 1942, and was a naval battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and United States Navy. The battle […]

Gun versus Butter Debate… the winner is almost always the one with the gun pointed at your head

Progressives always try to point out the stupidity of spending money on arms and ammunition instead of butter. The argument goes back as early as recorded history and frankly, I don’t think there will ever be a clear and definitive answer for every age. People on the other side of the argument have stated that […]

Riding the Rails

I will probably be off line for a few days while I pack up some things from our house and move into our temporary digs. I have a new job which promises to keep me very busy. We tried the business gig for over a year and with the uncertainties of the economy and health […]

Exceptional – Does it matter to you?

Look up the word exceptional in the dictionary and a few of the words stick out right away: Rare Unusual Superior Extraordinary By extension, the word exceptionalism is the condition of being exceptional which includes all of those superlatives. It is the belief that something as large as a country does not have to […]

Lessons from Guadalcanal: “The Goettge Patrol”

There have been many books written through the ages about fighting a war. From the lessons of Sun Tzu to the lengthy books on modern war campaigns, we have learned better ways to achieve our goals if we are wise enough to learn from other’s mistakes. One of the ones from Guadalcanal was the disastrous […]

“A kiss is still a kiss” – Wait, do chicken kisses count?

Ah, Louis Armstrong singing “As Time Goes By”. There was a great voice for the ages. But the most famous rendition of the song As Time Goes By came from an obscure little movie filmed at the beginning of the Second World War called Casablanca with a couple of big name stars filmed seventy years […]

The Die is Cast; Vandegrift does the impossible

America and her allies were woefully unprepared to fight the kind of war they found themselves with in the Pacific. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent attacks around the Pacific Rim decimated the plans and the resources of the forces that would become allied in their opposition to Japanese aggression. Traditional forces were […]

Two Battles that Determined the Course of a War

By July of 1942, the U.S. Navy had proven itself in two critical battles and a number of smaller but significant actions. The Battle for the Coral Sea and Midway proved that the American sailor was more than an equal for any naval force on the face of the planet. Despite numerical strength, the Japanese […]

The Storyteller’s Burden

I don’t know when I first learned how to tell stories As a young boy, I listened to the stories of many people who were older than me. Some of them were meant to inform, some were meant to teach lessons, and of course in the early days, the hope was that if I listened […]