1924 – America is 8 Years behind in Submarine Development

1924 Navy Behind There were a number of visionary men in the US Navy that made predictions about the future of warfare. One of my favorites was Chester Nimitz wh was an early proponent of submarine warfare. Much of what he predicted as an ensign came to fruition during the Second World War when the […]

“Every Moment Mattered” Book Update

Very fast update on my upcoming book. I got an update from my editor and the first big round of edits will be back to me by Monday. Kind of interesting since that is fifty years to the day after I joined the Navy and started my journey as a submariner. The note was really […]

The Final Dive of the F-4 (March 1915)

F-4; THE FIRST SUBMARINE LOSS FOR THE US NAVY It was on the morning of March 25, 1915, that F-1, F-3, and F-4 left Honolulu for local operations. F-4 did not return, and the eventual detection and recovery was a classic of naval salvage. She was later “interned” at the bottom of Pearl Harbor after […]

The Ship That Wouldn’t Die – USS Shaw DD-373

The Ship That Wouldn’t Die – USS Shaw DD-373 One of the most remarkable pictures captured at Pearl Harbor on December 7th was the spectacular explosion of the USS Shaw which was in a floating dry dock as the attack began. The bomb damage was significant enough to make anyone watching wonder if anything could […]

Rear Admiral Taussig and the Warning Before Pearl Harbor

Rear Admiral Taussig and the Warning Before Pearl Harbor An obscure article in the Southern Jewish Weekly put forward an interesting idea in the form of an article published on January 30, 1942. In some ways, this is part three of a series about Taussig. But it casts the story in a different light and […]

Holiday Routine – U.S.S. Vestal Daily Employment Schedule for Sunday, 7 December 1941

Holiday Routine – U.S.S. Vestal Daily Employment Schedule for Sunday, 7 December 1941 The document I discovered during my research on Cassin Young was yellowed and tattered with age. Some sailor had the presence of mind to keep a copy of it in his personal possession as a reminder of the day that would live […]

Submarine Base Pearl Harbor – Buried Secrets

Buried Secrets One of my favorite submarine reference books is called “United States Submarine Operations in World War II” written by Theodore Roscoe in conjunction with the Bureau of Naval Personnel and published by the United States Naval Institute. Reading through the book is like a looking through a periscope to the past. The people […]

USS Pollack SS 180 – Bringing the War to the Enemy January 1942

A great piece of history concerning the first submarine to draw blood in the waters off of Japan. America was still reeling from the attacks at Pearl and across the Pacific. The large battleships were crippled or sunk and the aircraft carriers that would ultimately tip the scales were still few and far between. One […]

Remembering Pearl Harbor – The Story of Gunners Mate Second Class John C. Pensyl

Their voices cry out from the past. 2403 Americans died from the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of that figure, 2,008 of them were enlisted with the Navy, 218 were members of the US Army, 109 were Marines, and 68 were civilians. While much is written about the event, we need to never lose focus on […]

The Pearl Harbor Attack at Eighty Years

On December 7, 2021, it will be eighty years since the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor. In all of those years, many books have been written about the attack and its significance. In the aftermath of the attack, there were also a lot of congressional hearings to discover why such a devastating attack could have […]