In Contact

October 1998
“A Cuppa Joe” (See J. P. Riley, pp. 18-22, July/August 1998 Naval History) Richard S. Greeley I have recently seen a rerun of the movie Mr. Roberts with Henry ...

Book Reviews

Reviewed by Craig L. Symonds & Bruce F. Thompson
October 1998
Raphael Semmes, The Philosophical Mariner Warren F. Spencer. Tuscaloosa and New York: The University of Alabama Press, 1997. 250 pp. Illus. Ind. $37.95 ($36.05). Reviewed by Craig L. Symonds Aside ...

The Sea Services’ First Rotary-Wing Aircraft

By Norman Polmar, Author, The Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet
October 1998
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’s first rotary-wing aircraft was not a helicopter. It was the Pitcairn XOP-1 autogiro, a Rube Goldberg-like craft that used a conventional nose- mounted engine-propeller ...

Historic Fleets

By A. D. Baker III, Editor, Combat Fleets of the World
October 1998
The U.S. Navy has operated only three designated evacuation transports, the Tryon (APH-1), Pinkney (APH-2), and Rixey (APH-3). The trio originally were begun as the Alcoa Courier, Alcoa Corsair, and ...

Naval History News

October 1998
Airshow Commemorates World War II The Mid Atlantic Air Museum at be Reading Regional Airport in Pennsylvania held its 8th annual World War II Commemorative Airshow, on 6 and 7 ...

Salty Talk

By Commander Tyrone Martin, U.S. Navy (Retired)
October 1998
The record of a ship’s activities is called the “log.” In it are recorded the hour-by-hour notations of the direction in which the ship is going and her speed, all ...

The Mariners’ Museum

By Sandra Julian Barker
October 1998
Nestled within 550 acres of woodland, the Mariners’ Museum sits on the shore of placid Lake Maury. More than 35,000 items pertaining to the sea have found a safe harbor ...

Navy Yarns

By Captain Roy C. Smith, III, U.S. Navy (Retired)
October 1998
In the late 1950s, Captain Otto Spahr arrived in Malta to take command of a U.S. destroyer division. HMS Magpie, commanded by Prince Philip, was in port at the time ...