ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF ED STEVENS

Nine Navy Golds

By Colonel Mike Nassr, U.S. Air Force (Retired)
October 2000
A green team of U.S. Naval Academy rowers caps an incredible season by beating the Russians at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland.

SEALs on the Trail

By Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison
October 2000
“Shining Brass” was the code name for cross-border operations of Navy SEAL-led “Spike Teams” in the mid-1960s against the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.

The Bomb and I

By Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn, U.S. Navy (Retired)
October 2000
Throughout the Cold War, naval aviators trained to drop nukes—fortunately, it never came to that.

‘Old Bloody Hands’

By Colonel John Grider Miller, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
October 2000
In this excerpt from the new Naval Institute Press book, The Co Vans: U.S. Marine Advisors in Vietnam, the author recalls the ominous portent during Lam Son 719.

What’s to Become of Sara?

By Frank Lennon
October 2000
Plans are in motion for the USS Saratoga (CV-60) Museum Foundation, Inc., to moor the decommissioned carrier at the old Quonset Point Naval Air Station, on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay ...

So Many Memories

By Paul Stillwell
October 2000
Folklore has it that one’s life passes before his eyes in the moments of dying. Perhaps so, but it can happen in other ways. Recently I had the experience of ...

In Contact

October 2000
“The Earhart Tragedy: Old Mystery, New Hypothesis” (See J. Riley, pp. 20-29, August 2000 Naval History) Chief Warrant Officer Third Class A. A. Adams, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired) John ...

Historic Fleets

By A. D. Baker III, Editor, Combat Fleets of the World
October 2000
Completed in 1932 by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., the 403- foot, steam turbine-propelled passenger ship St. John carried three different type designations and hull numbers during ...

The First Airborne Early Warning Aircraft

By Norman Polmar, Author, The Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet
October 2000
The Grumman-designed TBF/TBM Avenger series was the U.S. Navy’s principal torpedo plane from mid-1942 through the end of World War II—former President George Bush probably is the best-known Avenger pilot ...

Naval History News

October 2000
Korean War Remembered From Columbia, South Carolina, to Anderson, California, and from Washington, D.C., to Branson, Missouri, Americans across the nation took time on 25 June 2000 to mark the ...

Salty Talk

By Commander Tyrone G. Martin, U.S. Navy (Retired)
October 2000
The owners of ships in early America were people willing to take large risks. While the ships themselves usually were small schooners and brigs, they represented a very large investment ...
An episode of the naval battle at Trafalgar: the ship Redoutable (French) against the vessels Victory (British), Téméraire (British) and Thunderer (British). Spain, Cape Trafalgar, 21 October 1805

Book Reviews

Reviewed by Stephen Howarth, Captain James Stavridis, U.S. Navy & Commander John D. Alden, U.S. Navy (Retired)
October 2000
Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind Peter Padfield. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000. 340 pp. Illus. Maps. Gloss. Notes. Bib. Index. $35.00 ($33.25). Reviewed by Stephen Howarth ...

The USS Olympia (C-6)

By Lieutenant Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, U.S. Navy
October 2000
Commodore George Dewey truculently began the battle of Manila Bay on 1 May 1898 on board the cruiser USS Olympia (C-6) with the famous words, “You may fire when you ...

Navy Yarns

By Captain Roy C. Smith, III, U.S. Navy (Retired)
October 2000
A story typical of the bare-bones side of the 1920s Navy was of a Navy-Marine landing exercise in Samoa early in the decade, when shortages dictated simulation of weapons and ...