Miscellaneous… 1940

Miscellaneous… The Bluejackets Manual has been the mainstay for educating sailors since 1902. Prior to that time, the sailors were considered to be too illiterate to merit having a manual with instructions on how to be an American Bluejacket. For a hundred and twelve years, the manual has undergone a number of revisions to reflect […]

“Ever a Submariner” by Jody Durham, MM2/SS (A Gang)

I am obviously a sucker for a great submarine story. I spend much of my free time researching stories about a rare breed of men who chose voluntarily to sail on ships designed by their creators to sail beneath the oceans surface. I was recently introduced to Jody Durham, a fellow Cold War sailor (and […]

Tally-Ho… An unhappy Valentine ’s Day for the UIT – 23

Many of my early days of submarining were spent in and around areas that are considered choke points for global navigation. Without revealing too many details, the hunting near certain places has always been richer because of the availability of certain vessels of interest.The Bluejackets manual I received in Boot Camp at Great Lakes Illinois provided the […]

Blinders? Why no, these are my new leadership Goggles!

Originally posted on theleansubmariner:
For over a century the leadership of the U.S. Army and Navy were in agreement about how the United States coast would be managed: the Army would defend the beaches and out to the range of their coastal guns, and the Navy would protect anything beyond that range. The advent of…

Comrades, If you like your Reich, you can keep your Reich

Every time I see a member of the opposition party standing up and supporting policies that are ill thought out and ill prepared to serve the nation, I am reminded of the delusional attitude of the despicable Nazi Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. His address to the German nation in December of 1943 on the eve […]

Inflict Maximum Damage on Enemy Shipping

Victory At Sea ~ Full Fathom Five – HQ The threat of death at full fathom five is always in the backs of the minds of the submariners according to the steady voice of the narrator. Yet they still went on many patrols and exacted a toll on the enemy that brought him to a […]

December 27 1943 Greatest Generation … well mostly

“We’re all in this together” … unless of course you were in the union One of the greatest myths ever perpetrated about the greatest generation is that everybody was in it together for the win during World War 2. Winning a war is a lot more than just having men in uniform. They need the […]

Christmas 1943 – The Tide Has Turned in the West

In the disastrous aftermath of Pearl Harbor December 1941, the United States and the remaining countries that were considered free faced enormous odds in their struggle against the Axis Powers. The war plans that had been poured over with such intensity for so many decades now laid in ruins as the ships and planes that […]

The Day after Pearl Harbor

The day after Pearl Harbor was still a chaotic day for most in the Hawaiian Islands. Rumors of an invading Japanese force were widespread and panic was probably just below the surface. The brilliant and gleaming fleet was awash in black residue and blood. Shipwrights and common sailors frantically were trying to rescue men […]

The Bedford boys of Company A of the 29th Infantry Division’s 116th Infantry Regiment never had a chance.

There is an old truth known by military men that no military plan survives contact with the enemy. This was never more obvious than what happened at 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, when the invasion at Omaha Beach began. Allied bombardments and a massive air campaign that went awry had failed to eliminate or […]