Category: Military History

Read Part 15 HERE The 1990s brought good times and bad, with some Det K members being relieved for cause. But as one Det K soldier remarked about the time, “Keep your mouth shut, do some ‘hooah’ PT every day, and the world will keep turning is always my recommendation whenever an SF soldier finds […]

The employment of Visual Tracking skills is nothing new and has been a critical skill in human survival and evolution. Primitive man developed the skill of tracking by associating a print laid by an animal to that of prey.  As humans evolved, visual tracking played a significant role in everyday survival, whether hunting for food, […]

On July 21st, 1969, human history changed forever.  With a single step, Neil Armstrong became the first human in history to set foot on another world; a feat man had dreamed of accomplishing since time immemorial. Only eight years prior, President John F. Kennedy assumed the responsibility of convincing Congress that sending a manned mission […]

Read Part 14 HERE Serving on a combat diver team in the mid to late 1980’s, Hand and his team mates would plan to static line parachute into the Team Spirit exercise but that never happened. Instead they helo-casted from a CH-47 helicopter in the ocean off the coast of South Korea with their Zodiac. […]

Nobody hates a suicide mission more than a Green Beret. Through the entire training pipeline, it is emphasized that a highly trained Special Forces soldier is a national treasure who should smart his way out of things and live to fight another day. Turns out that the National Command Authority was quite willing to throw […]

Their uniforms became encrusted with layers of powdery concrete blanketing them as they descended the stairs. Across their weary faces, black soot smeared in strange wavy patterns created by the channels of sweat dripping from their chins. They had just completed a sweep of the upper stories of the fortress-like grain elevator and silo. Just […]

Great Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), the unit tasked with conducting behind-the-lines missions against the Axis powers during World War II, invented many unique and deadly items for its jobs by utilizing specialists who worked night and day in a mansion called The Frythe near the town of Welwyn Garden City. To those in the […]

Read Part 13 HERE In the bloody aftermath of the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes, the raid on Entebbe, and Germany’s GSG-9 storming of an aircraft in Mogadishu, the western world had to take a hard look at their military capabilities and figure out how they would address the growing threat of terrorism. The United […]

He was wounded 37 times by bullets, shrapnel, a bayonet, and a rifle butt but his only thoughts were on those others who were hit on that day in May 1968. His actions saved eight other men’s lives in Vietnam on that day. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery but it […]

Read part 12 Here Fears of North Korean infiltrations continued, but by this time Det K and other Special Forces teams had been working with the Korean Special Forces for a long time. Gone were the Wild West years of the 1960s. By now, the South could stand on its own two feet and deter […]

Read Part 11 Here A second-order effect of the 12/12 incident was the Kwangju Rebellion of 1980. General Chun had by now taken control of both the army and the KCIA, and while high-ranking Korean military officers continued to make political maneuvers in smoke-filled rooms, relations with the United States had more or less stabilized—although […]

In recent months, the American THAAD missile defense system has garnered a great deal of attention, as its powerful radar array and kinetic projectiles are said to be capable of successfully defending an area the size of New Jersey from incoming ballistic missiles.  The United States has had a particular interest in intercepting inbound nukes […]