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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Why Native scouts served with the federal cavalry in the West
The question students always ask, once they learn that Native men served as scouts for the United States Army against other Native people, is why anyone would do that.
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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…
