On Our Scope

By Fred L. Schultz Editor-in-Chief
December 2001
The irony certainly wasn’t lost on any of us. The topic was Pearl Harbor. A team of imagery intelligence and ship forensic experts had analyzed a film shot shortly after ...
COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS

Death of the Arizona

By Commander John Rodgaard, U.S. Naval Reserve, Peter K. Hsu, Carroll L. Lucas, and Captain Andrew Biache Jr., U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
December 2001
During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, did the battleship Arizona sink from a torpedo hit, or did she fall victim to precision horizontal bombing?

The Story Behind the Telegram

By Commander David Gaddis, U.S. Naval Reserve
December 2001
In early 1941, the U.S. ambassador to Japan warned his government of a possible future Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The information within that famous telegram came from an unexpected ...

‘What a Way to Start a War’

By Rear Admiral Victor A. Dybdal, U.S. Navy (Retired)
December 2001
The story of the USS Helm (DD-388)—here, at Pearl Harbor later in the war—has been obscured because she was steaming up the West Loch channel, away from the focus of ...

Tante Meier’s Naval Nephews

By Friedrich Lothar Schmidt, as told to Commander George Cornelius, U.S. Navy (Retired)
December 2001
Mission: Capture Austria’s top Nazi in the waning days of World War II and bring him to justice. The unlikely man who carried it out was a German national in ...
Gunboat Palos

River Raid on Korea

By Lieutenant Colonel Merrill L. Bartlett, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired) and Jack Sweetman
December 2001
In an excerpt from the new Naval Institute Press book, The U.S. Marine Corps: An Illustrated History, the authors recount the Korean Expedition of 1871—a military success but a diplomatic ...

Another Kind of Pearl Harbor

By Paul Stillwell
December 2001
In his “On Our Scope” column, this magazine’s Editor-in-chief Fred Schultz describes the experience he and I had on the morning of 11 September. As we drove to a briefing ...

In Contact

December 2001
“Decatur and Naval Leadership” (See F. Leiner, pp. 30-33, October 2001 Naval History) Commander Tyrone G. Martin, U. S. Navy (Retired) While Stephen Decatur once again gets “good press” (something ...

Historic Fleets

By A. D. Baker III, Editor, Combat Fleets of the World
December 2001
During World War II, the U.S. Navy operated 13 large seaplane tenders (AVs), losing only one to enemy action, the Langley (AV-3, ex-CV-1), to Japanese forces in February 1942. The ...

The Ultimate Helldiver

By Norman Polmar, Author, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet
December 2001
The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver— successor to the highly successful SBD Dauntless—never equaled the popularity or accomplishments of its predecessor. The SB2C did see extensive combat during the last year of ...

Naval History News

December 2001
Pearl Harbor Attack to Be Remembered with Ceremonies and Conference The 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that catapulted the United States into World War ...

Reviews

Reviewed by Richard Frank & R. F. Sumrall
December 2001
Pearl Harbor Betrayed Michael V. Gannon. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2001. 320 pp. Photos. Notes. Bib. Index. $27.50 ($24.75). Reviewed by Richard Frank The Japanese attack on Pearl ...

Salty Talk

By Commander Tyrone G. Martin, U.S. Navy (Retired)
December 2001
A number of words in our language originated as an individual’s family name. The good Doctor Guillotin of the French Revolution gave us “guillotine,” and another doctor gave us the ...

Navy Yarns

By Captain Roy Smith III, U.S. Navy (Retired)
December 2001
During World War II, one of the battleship HMS Malaya’s officers told me of a time in the South Atlantic when his ship sighted a lifeboat with survivors of a ...