On Our Scope

By Fred L. Schultz Editor-in-Chief
August 2002
Several weeks ago, an announcement arrived by e-mail, detailing an exhibition that had just opened at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. In summer 1942 ...
"BATTLE OF SAVO ISLAND," BY JOHN HAMILTON/NAVAL INSTITUTE COLLECTION

Savo Island: The Worst Defeat

By Captain George William Kittredge, U.S. Navy (Retired)
August 2002
An officer on board the cruiser Chicago recalls an August night 60 years ago, when the Japanese sink four Allied ships and damage his severely.

Disaster on Lake Huron

By Barry Gough
August 2002
In the new Naval Institute Press book, Fighting Sail on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, a Canadian historian recounts an expedition—here, entering the Detroit River in July 1814—led by a ...

The Wampanoag Goes on Trial

By Stephen C. Small
August 2002
In 1868, the USS Wampanoag was the swiftest warship in the world, the crowning achievement of mid-19th-century naval engineering. Within months, however, she had been decommissioned and discarded by a ...

Eyewitness to Disaster

By Kurt H. Krahn, with Captain William J. Barnard, U.S. Navy (Retired)
August 2002
It has been 65 years since the German airship Hindenburg caught fire and burned as she approached her Lakehurst, New Jersey, moorings. One man who was there recalls that horrific ...

How to Help Start a War

By Captain Norman Klar, U.S. Navy (Retired)
August 2002
An officer who placed a signals intelligence team on board the USS Maddox (DD-731), one of the two destroyers involved in the August 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, recalls the first ...

The Coast Guard’s Pacific Colonizers

By Captain Gretchen G. Grover, U.S. Naval Reserve
August 2002
In 1935, U.S. Coast Guard cutters—including the USCG William J. Duane (WPG-33), unloading here at Howland Island—began depositing small groups of Hawaiians and U.S. Army engineers on several Pacific desert ...

The Loss of an Old Friend

By Paul Stillwell
August 2002
In March of 1944, the Navy for the first time deliberately commissioned black officers. (A few had become officers before then because the Navy mistakenly believed they were white.) The ...
JAMES DIETZ (TOP)/JIM GRIFFITHS (BOTTOM)

In Contact

August 2002
Editor's Note: We received numerous responses to our question, "What's Wrong with This Picture?" on page 30 of the June 2002 issue, asking readers to identify the historical inaccuracies contained ...

Historic Fleets

By A. D. Baker III, Editor, Combat Fleets of the World
August 2002
In addition to 403 173-foot PC-class patrol craft ordered for the U.S. Navy in 1941, 18 173-foot hulls were ordered for use as minesweepers, as the Adroit class. Built by ...

The Best Carrier Fighter

By Norman Polmar, Author, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet
August 2002
The Grumman F6F Hellcat was the first U.S. Navy carrier-based fighter that could defeat the Japanese A6M Zero fighter under virtually all conditions. The only other carrier fighter to earn ...

Naval History News

August 2002
Navy’s Oldest Squadron Transitions to Super Hornet Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 14, based at Naval Air Station Lemoore in California, recently earned a “safe for flight” certification to fly the ...

Book Reviews

Reviewed by Rear Admiral Joseph Callo, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired), Captain Edward L. Beach, U.S. Navy (Retired) & Ernest Arroyo
August 2002
The Nelson Touch: The Life and Legend of Horatio Nelson Terry Coleman. London: Bloomsbury, 2002. 423 pp. Illus. Appendixes. Notes. Bib. Index. $35.00 ($31.50). Reviewed, by Rear Admiral Joseph Callo ...

Salty Talk

By Commander Tyrone G. Martin, U.S. Navy (Retired)
August 2002
The man in charge of “hotel services” on one of today’s cruise ships is called the “purser. The title also was used in the old navies for the man responsible ...