How the USS Samuel B Roberts DE 413 fought battleships
A destroyer escort was not built to fight a battleship. She was built to shepherd convoys and hunt submarines, cheaply and in quantity, and the design reflects exactly that.
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Why the ironclad USS Baron DeKalb was so vulnerable from below
The Baron DeKalb was sunk in July 1863 in the Yazoo River, and she was not sunk by gunfire. She was sunk by what the period called torpedoes and what we would call mines.
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Why the USS Becuna SS 319 was rebuilt for the Cold War
The Becuna is moored in Philadelphia next to the cruiser Olympia, and most visitors walk through her in fifteen minutes without realising they are looking at two different…
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The design flaws that doomed the airship USS Akron ZRS 4
The Akron went into the Atlantic off the New Jersey coast in the early hours of 4 April 1933. Seventy-three men died. Three survived.
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How early radar changed the battles on the USS Texas BB 35
The Texas was commissioned in 1914. She is a museum ship now, and she is the only surviving American battleship that served in both world wars, which makes her a useful place to…
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How the USS Olympia C 6 brought home the Unknown Soldier
Olympia is the oldest steel warship still afloat anywhere, and she is tied up in Philadelphia. Most people know her as Dewey’s flagship at Manila Bay in 1898. The voyage I find…
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Why so many second world war deck logs never made it to the archives
People write to the National Archives expecting to find a day by day record of a relative’s ship and are told the record does not exist. That answer is usually correct, and it is…
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How the USS Laffey DD 724 survived Okinawa
You can walk her deck today. She is tied up at Patriots Point in Charleston, and if you go, stand at the after gun mount and look forward, because that is roughly where the worst…
