Military History

From BBC News 17 April 1961: Exiles invade Cuba at Bay of Pigs Reports from Cuba say the island has been invaded by counter-revolutionary forces trying to overthrow the country's leader, Fidel Castro. The only news coming out of Cuba is broadcast by the government-run radio station. All other communications with the island have been cut. THe first landing is reported to have taken place in the early hours of this morning. Broadcasts from Cuban government radio appealing for medical help indicate that the raiders have successfully penetrated 25 miles (40km) inland. They appear to have come ashore on an area of the coast known as the Bahía de Cochino…

From USAF Global Strike Command [excerpt]

Reviewed by Ellen A. Ahlness, PhD All Present and Accounted For is a comprehensive, well-researched, and well-narrated case study in U.S. Coast Guard History. Throughout his narration of this disastrous grounding, Craig ensures the historical rendering is never sterile; instead, it maintains an eye to the human experience of a complicated event in U.S. Military history. The book is divided into two parts, together comprising a total of twelve chapters. It also features an introduction, epilogue, final comments, and appendices. The inclusion of extensive supplemental information—including poetry, first-person accounts, images, informational visuals, and ship specif…

From Air Force Times Tuskegee Airmen get congressional medal today By Darlene Superville - The Associated Press Posted : Thursday Mar 29, 2007 8:02:02 EDT Six decades after completing their World War II mission and coming home to a country that discriminated against them because they were black, the Tuskegee Airmen are getting high honors from Congress. That gratitude will be expressed Thursday when the legendary black aviators will receive a Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. The award is the most prestigious Congress can offer. “It’s never too late for your country to say that you’ve done a great job for us,” said Ret. C…

Reviewed by Ed Calouro Most histories of World War II at sea rightly focus on the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany. After all, these nations’ navies did the bulk of the fighting. The French, Italian, and other fleets generally receive short shrift. John Jordan and Robert Dumas have shifted the spotlight in their reissued French Battleships, 1922-1956. Originally published in 2009, the 2020 release is a high quality, superior stock paperback, the type readers expect from Seaforth Publishing. This is a first-rate history of the four modern fast capital ships of the Marine Nationale and is a superb presentation of the Dunkerque– and Richelieu-class ba…

We known his existence from years ago, but now it's the first time I see this images of F-5E and A-37B tested by the Soviets, after the overruning of the Bien Hoa base in 1975: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGmBdqxrwbw Below a lot of mostly stupid comments, and a very good pun: "It's a MiG-28"!!!

The Pebble Island Raid (Defense Media Network)

Flight International's World Air Forces 2021 (no registration required this year): https://www.flightglobal.com/reports/world-air-forces-2021/141456.article

Reviewed by Jeff Schultz Mariano Sciaroni and Andy Smith’s “Go Find Him and Bring Me Back His Hat”: The Royal Navy’s Anti-Submarine Campaign in the Falklands/Malvinas War is an important look at the relatively obscure rivalry between a few Argentine diesel submarines and the Royal Navy’s anti-submarine defenses such as helicopters, warships and the Royal Air Force’s maritime patrol aircraft which tried to limit the threat to the Task Force vessels as they transited to the disputed islands. Most related books focus on the land and air aspects of the war instead of the exhausting battle above and beneath the sea fought by tired crews trying to find elusive diesel subma…

Welcoming the U.S. Atlantic Fleet to Sydney, Australia, August 1908. Artwork by Norman Carter, published in The Sydney Mail, Wednesday, 19 August, 1908. Courtesy of John C. Reilly, Jr.. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. The cruise of the Great White Fleet took the U.S. Navy around the globe in fourteen months on a journey totaling 43,000 miles. They visited twenty unique port calls across six continents. It was a monumental “show of flag” for the burgeoning world power. The fleet showcased the naval and maritime capabilities of its new “Steel Navy” to nations around the world. Here are ten interesting facts about the historic around-the-world cruise. …

Reviewed by Jeff Schultz Ben Skipper’s Landing Craft & Amphibians: Seaborne Vessels in the 20th Century briefly delves into the interesting world of landing craft and amphibians involved in various conflicts in the 20th century from World War II to the present. While it is not authoritative, it does detail many such craft with useful sections for modelers. Skipper is an RAF veteran and freelance writer with several “Pen and Sword” titles to his credit such as The Battles of El Alamein in the “BattleCraft” series and several others in the “LandCraft” series about the Land Rover, Humvee and M113 Armored Personnel Carrier. This 64-page A4 format monograph is divi…

By Michał A. Piegzik Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb, Ph.D. The initial volume in this two-part work, The Darkest Hour, Volume 1: The Japanese Naval Offensive in the Indian Ocean 1942 – The Opening Moves, was reviewed by me and published in Thursday Tidings on 1 September 2022: www.navyhistory.org/2022/08/the-darkest-hour-volume-1-the-japanese-naval-offensive-in-the-indian-ocean-1942-the-opening-moves/. The concluding volume became available on 15 September and is considered herein. Briefly some background: the Polish author, Michał A. Piegzik, holds a doctorate in law from the University of Wroclaw (2015) and lives and works in Japan as a researcher in Japanese fa…

It's the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War next year - which means that we're going to be getting a lot of declassified files from the British government. There's already a major new work on General Belgrano due out written by the Major who was tasked to investigate the sinking - with a revelation that the British intercepted key Argentine messages.

A very interesting site about discrete operations in Groom Lake and near sites in the Cold War, as example: http://area51specialprojects.com/sp_area51.html Finded only some minutes ago, but it's clearly a very interesting site, worth of extended browsing.

Reviewed By Jeff Schultz Mike Norman and Michael Jones’ The Falklands War: There and Back Again – The Story of Naval Party 8901 is a gripping memoir of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War told from the perspective of the Royal Marine commander of Naval Party 8901 (NP-8901), the British troops assigned to defend the islands. NP-8901 surprisingly survived the initial Argentine occupation without loss and steadfastly volunteered to participate in the later recovery of the Falklands in this peculiar, late-stage, imperial conflict set against the backdrop of the Cold War. Mike Norman is a thirty-year veteran of the Royal Marines who served proudly from 1962 to 1992 in loca…

Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb, Ph.D. This new title from the Naval Institute Press’s series, Studies in Naval History and Sea Power, is written by Christopher Buckley, son of Captain David Buckey (USN Retired) and an undergraduate history major from the University of California Santa Cruz, who obtained his doctorate at the University of Salford (UK) in 2013. Genesis of the Grand Fleet, in part, derives from his thesis, Forging the Shaft of the Spear of Victory: The Creation and Evolution of the Home Fleet in the Prewar Era, 1900-1914. Professor Eric John Grove (1948-2021), a distinguished, inspirational, and highly respected naval historian, author, lecturer and televi…

By David F. Winkler, Ph.D. Staff Historian On October 17, 1922, America’s first carrier, USS Langley held a fixed position in the York River as preparations proceeded for a historic milestone. Naval Aviator No. 41, Lt. Virgil “Squash” Griffin, climbed into a cockpit of a VE-7SF biplane (BuNo. A-5932). As Griffin prepared for takeoff, winches on the stern pulled and released lines to the aft anchor buoys to adjust the ship’s heading into the wind. Griffin, who would later earn the nickname “You All” Griffin by Langley’s crew during his XO tour a decade later thanks to his Alabama drawl, earned his “Squash” moniker at the U.S. Naval Academy as a member of the Class …

Very interesting and useful site to planning historical scenarios. If you go to http://seavixen.org/893-squadron and click on "Correlation Squadrons/Ships", you will find UK carriers placement along the years (I did find this site just looking for those UK carrier data).

VADM Mark “MRT” Fox tells the story of how he scored the first MiG kill of Operation Desert Storm on January 17, 1991. View our full Second Saturday Webinar HERE. The post Blog first appeared on Naval Historical Foundation. View the full article

Shamelessly borrowed from the Admiralty Trilogy mailing list Staring at the Sea: the Soviet RORSAT and EOSAT programs (Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, November/December 1999, pdf)