Off Mobile, Alabama, 130 years ago, Admiral David G. Farragut went down in naval and military history with his bold command, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” A retired Navy commander reinterprets the great battle in this issue with a previously unpublished account written by a Union corpsman who was there. A recently uncovered photo frames two warships that took part in the fighting.
The executive officer for four of the five war patrols of the USS Tang remembers his audacious skipper, Richard H. O’Kane, and the crack submarine crew that sank so many Japanese ships 50 years ago.
A Navy photographer was awake for 72 straight hours 25 years ago, anticipating the arrival of the Apollo 11 astronauts on board the carrier Hornet (CVS-12).
Also in this issue, we look at World War II naval aviation—in living color; follow the Wasp in the War of 1812; storm the U-boat pens of Zeebrugge in World War I with noted British author Stephen Howarth; and look back with a Dutch naval officer to the Battle of the Java Sea.