Free Republic

Where our Sailors Rest. “If you ever want to sleep with a blonde again, you had better shoot down these bastards as soon as they come up” – a destroyer captain motivates his exhausted crew shortly before a kamikaze attack. The sea-battle toll for Okinawa that ended on June 21st 1945 was 36 U.S. warships sunk and 368 damaged. Almost 5,000 sailors were killed in action and another 5,000 wounded. War naturally conjures images of courageous infantrymen. Gettysburg, Flanders Fields and not the Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf. Too often forgotten are the heroic Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine...

A New York Navyman and an NYU student were happy to oblige The Post’s request to recreate the famed 1945 V-J Day photo from Times Square, during a Fleet Week bash. Brandon O’Connell, a sailor stationed at Chambers Street, showed up ready to mingle at the Fleet Week Open Bar Singles Party Friday night to meet “somebody that would like to have fun.” Early on in the evening, the Rochester native was hitting it off with Evangeline Lim, a master’s student at NYU, who told The Post he was “nice and cute.”

The Department of Defense has awarded Fincantieri Marinette Marine a contract to build two U.S. Navy frigates, according to the daily Pentagon contract announcements.The contract, valued at more than $1 billion, is for two Constellation-class Frigates, FFG 66 and FFG 67. The Navy selected the company to build the Constellation-class frigate in 2020.“The team at Fincantieri Marine Group is committed to support the U.S. Navy, and the Constellation program will be the centerpiece of our portfolio for decades,” said Marco Galbiati, CEO of Ficantieri Marinette Marine, in a news release.The company received the contract for the lead ship of the...

The final resting place of an iconic U.S. Navy submarine that was sunk 80 years ago during World War II was located 3,000 feet below the ocean's surface, the Naval History and Heritage Command said Thursday. The USS Harder – which earned the nickname "Hit 'em HARDER" – was found off the Philippine island of Luzon, sitting upright and "relatively intact" except for damage behind its conning tower from a Japanese depth charge, the command said. The sub was discovered using data collected by Tim Taylor, CEO of the Lost 52 Project, which works to locate the 52 submarines sunk...

A Navy supply ship was run aground by a junior officer off the coast of Bahrain shortly after the ship's master -- or captain -- left the bridge to eat dinner, an investigation revealed. The USNS Alan Shepard had finished up a maintenance period on July 15 and was on the way to a port in Bahrain when she was directed to an area just off shore to wait on a pilot. The master took the ship there and then went to eat dinner, leaving the ship in the hands of a much more junior third officer. Less than 30...

Before the rise of aircraft carriers, battleships were every navy’s most powerful asset. Over the years, scores of these vessels sailed the seas, bristling with weapons, and their actions marked the turning points of world wars and other major conflicts. Five battleships stand out among their number.

President Joe Biden’s Navy secretary wants to import skilled blue-collar migrants to build the U.S. Navy ships that protect Americans and their job opportunities. “What we’ve got to do is open up the spigot a bit, basically, on legal immigration to allow blue-collar workers to come here … so they can actually work in our shipyards and be employed by the types of trades that are open to shipyard workers,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told a meeting in Arlington Va. Del Toro’s call for migrant shipbuilders comes amid a shipbuilding crisis where many U.S. warships are being delivered far...

The two dry docks large enough to accommodate a big deck amphibious warship in San Diego, Calif., are currently occupied, complicating the repairs of USS Boxer (LHD-4), USNI News has learned. Boxer came back into port last week with one of its rudders damaged after leaving earlier this month on deployment. As of Friday, the Navy was assessing how to repair the rudder to allow the 45,000-ton capital ship to return to sea, a service official told USNI News. The service would prefer to fix the rudder underwater with the understanding that the replacement repair could take up to two...

The Navy revealed that one of the ships it deployed to support the mission of building a pier to deliver aid to starving residents in Gaza was forced to turn back last week after it suffered a fire in its engine room. The incident comes as the Pentagon's self-imposed deadline of having the pier operational and delivering the needed aid by May rapidly approaches, and experts say there are other delays and problems cropping up with the mission. ... A retired Army chief warrant officer who has significant experience in the Army's watercraft community also told Military.com in an interview...

In this episode, Sal Mercogliano - a maritime historian at Campbell University (@campbelledu) and former merchant mariner - discusses the fire onboard the US Navy's Military Sealift Command USNS 2nd Lt John P Bobo while enroute to Gaza, along with the status of the other ships sent to the Mediterranean.

That’s taking time when they go in for their upgrades, and that’s taking a little bit longer than expected.. We have been documenting the U.S. Navy’s troubles with one of its premier amphibious assault ships, USS Boxer (LHD-4). This Wasp-Class ship, per the Navy’s description, is “[t]he largest of all amphibious warfare ships [and] resembles a small aircraft carrier.” It is capable of Vertical/Short Take-Off and Landing (V/STOL) fighter jet operations, meaning that because Boxer does not have launch catapults, it can’t launch classic aircraft carrier fighter jets like the F/A-18, but it can launch the venerable Harrier jump jet...

USS Carney (DDG-64) and USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) shot down between four and six Iranian-launched ballistic missiles, a senior military official told reporters Sunday.Both ships were in the Mediterranean. Carney most recently made a port visit to Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on April 10. Arleigh Burke is forward deployed to Rota, Spain.A senior military official said that land- and sea-based aircraft were also involved in the U.S. response. USNI News understands that the aircraft did not come from USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69). The aircraft carrier is in the Red Sea as part of the country’s Operation Prosperity Guardian, which aims...

US is Sending in Warships to Defend Israel 1 min clip ...

The US Navy has been mocked for posting a photo online of a sailor shooting a rifle with a back-to-front scope, in what social media users said showed America was “going to lose a major war”. The Navy’s official Instagram page issued a photo of Commander Cameron Yaste, the captain of the guided-missile destroyer USS John S McCain, shooting a rifle with a backwards-mounted scope. The image, also sent as an official press release, was captioned: “From engaging in practice gun shoots, conducting maintenance, testing fuel purity and participating in sea and anchor details, the #USNavy is always ready to...

Just in the last two days we have reported on major issues with the U.S. military, ranging from delays in every major Navy shipbuilding program, U.S. Navy Facing Major Shipbuilding Delays While China’s Navy Expansion Accelerates, to problems with military recruiting: Army Invites Retirees as Old as 70 to Return to Active Duty in Attempt to Fix Recruiting Woes. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, and all of you are likely well aware of the deteriorating state of our military under Joe Biden. But through all this, and the other foibles of today’s DEI/CRT-centric military, we always...

Amid concerns about American shipbuilding, the US Navy's top civilian official said this week that he was "floored" by a Pacific ally's capabilities in this space. The Navy secretary's comments came on the heels of an internal review that discovered that most of the Navy's top programs, including high-priority submarines, a first-in-class guided-missile frigate, and the third Ford-class aircraft carrier, are severely delayed by years, fueling worries from US officials about the ability to maintain our pace against great power rivals. During his keynote speech at the Navy League's Sea Air Space conference this week, Secretary of the Navy Carlos...

A U.S. Navy photo posted to X is being mocked for showing a commander shooting an AR-platform rifle with the scope mounted backwards. The photo shows a commander, identified as Commander Cameron Yaste by the Defense Blog, shooting an AR-platform rifle with what appears to be a Trijicon VCOG scope atop it. Problem: the scope is mounted backwards. This means the commander had no sight picture whatsoever as he fired the gun. This was shared today by the official US Navy Instagram. When you see it try not to break your phone. pic.twitter.com/udV0hyvdmJ — Zachary Bell (@zacharyebell) April 9, 2024

As the Navy’s largest U.S. trade show gets underway on Monday, officers in charge of the service’s marquee shipbuilding programs won’t offer the usual briefings with reporters and analysts about them. That break from the tradition of sharing program updates at the Navy’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition comes just days after the Navy announced that four of its most critical shipbuilding programs are years behind schedule. The Navy’s top admiral and civilian secretary have still not responded to questions about a damning Navy report released Tuesday outlining the sweeping failure of the Navy and its industrial partners to make expected progress on...

The Navy today released a rare public accounting of major delays for key shipbuilding programs, with ships from nine programs running behind, in some cases up to three years. In total, the Navy forecasts a cumulative delay of more than 11 years, at a time when lawmakers and Pentagon planners agree that the Navy needs to be modernizing and growing for a potential conflict in the Pacific.

David Walker from Norfolk, Va., was 19 years old when Japanese torpedoes sunk his battleship at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Walker was presumed dead following the attack on the Hawaii naval base, but his body was never recovered — that is, until recently. Officials announced on Thursday that Walker's remains were finally accounted for, thanks to scientists at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) whose mission is to recover and return missing service members from past conflicts. In a news release, the DPAA said that in 2018, military officials exhumed the unidentified remains of 25 people who were from Walker's...