Category: Military History

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii — When John D. Anderson reached his battle station in the USS Arizona’s No. 4 turret that morning, he realized the gigantic guns could do nothing against the swarms of attacking Japanese airplanes. But his twin brother, Delbert “Jake” Anderson, was manning an antiaircraft gun out on deck, and was in the […]

It was 75 years ago Wednesday that Oxnard resident Edward Waszkiewicz, then a 20-year-old fireman with the Navy, witnessed what he said sounded like the “end of the world coming.” On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Waszkiewicz looked up and saw three planes swooping down onto what was known as “Battleship Row,” a group of […]

USSOCOM – SOF Truth #5 “Most Special Operations require non-SOF assistance” Bold Alligator 2012 involved more than 25 naval vesicles, 14,000 personnel from 5 different countries. This was the largest Joint/Combined exercise in 10 years and reinforced more of a traditional large scale amphibious landing and assault operation. MARSOC was set center stage for the […]

In 1943, in the darkest depths of the Second World War the British sent a small, select group of intelligence officers from the Special Operations Executive (SOE) into Nazi-occupied Albania. Living under extreme conditions, one step ahead of capture at all times and short on supplies and support, the SOE personnel began to produce immediate […]

Have you ever crashed a Boeing 720 jetliner? Well, Fitzhugh Fulton has and lived to tell the tale! On December 1st, 1984 NASA research pilot “Fitz” Fulton purposely crash landed a four engine Boeing 720 loaded with 76,000 pounds of fuel into the desert at Edwards AFB, CA. By the way, Fitz was smart enough […]

On April 30, 1980, 6 men approached the Iranian Embassy at Princes Gate, in South Kensington, London. They were Arabs, members of a little known dissident group called the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan, an oil rich area of Iran which had ruled itself autonomously until 1925. Their goals were to re-establish […]

Weapon shipments intercepted in the Arabian sea by Australian, French and U.S. warships this year contained large quantities of Russian and Iranian weapons, some of which had markings similar to munitions recovered from Houthi fighters in Yemen, according to a new report released by an independent research group Wednesday. In October, U.S. officials claimed to have captured […]

In the media of late, SEALs have been lumped in with a great many other SOF units seeming to be just another elite form of a conventional unit. However, due to their many unique assets, frogmen have an illustrious history with many noteworthy accomplishments outside of the predominantly land warfare mission of the last 15 […]

One of the things I did when preparing to fight the Navy SEALs for our ‘Remembrance Day Rumble’ to raise money for charity was do a bit of reading up on US naval history. I’m a land combat man myself and I’ll admit I don’t know much about life on the ocean waves  – but […]

Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush and several advisors gathered at Camp David to weigh the country’s options. On the table in front of them, as you can see in the photo below, was a map of Afghanistan created by cartographers at the Central Intelligence Agency. It was […]

In the 1960’s, the United States was forced to deal with a communist regime 90 miles away from its shores.  Due to the threat of mutually assured destruction with a direct war with the Soviet Union, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had to tread carefully concerning Fidel Castro and Cuba.  Neither administration wanted […]

In a previous article about Blue Light, America’s first dedicated counter-terrorism unit, one of the Green Berets assigned to the outfit was named Gregory Dailey.  He not only re-designed the Blue Light emblem but also went on to design the HALO jump wings which are still in use by the Army to this day. The […]