On this day May 4, 1942, Captain Ranson “Fullie” Fullenwider would lead the FRUPAC Radio Intelligence Unit RIU on the aircraft carrier USS LEXINGTON CV-2 during the Battle of the Coral Sea. He and his team would escape injury when the LEXINGTON was attacked and the ship had to be abandoned. Two months later at the Battle of Midway he would also be leading the RUI team on the USS YORKTOWN CV-5 and would be among the last to leave the burning YORKTOWN with ADM Fletcher..
Photo credit – NCVA
May 4, 1942, 29 Navajos reported to Fort Defiance, Arizona, the first of roughly 400 to be trained as code talkers. Make sure to check the links at the end of the page for more articles about the Code Talkers.
Continue reading “Navajos Reported to Fort Defiance”
Communist attacks on the destroyer USS Maddox (DD 731) in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 and the killing of American service personnel in South Vietnam later in the year and in early 1965 convinced American military leaders that the outbreak of war was imminent. It was apparent that rather than buckling under U.S. military pressure, Hanoi had decided to take the offensive. CINCPAC noted in March 1965 a “shift of communist tactics” intended to “bring about the disengagement of the U.S. in South Vietnam.” In a prescient statement, Admiral Sharp concluded that the North Vietnamese felt that “if they can kill Americans, harass U.S. personnel, and destroy U.S. facilities the American people will, in time, become so tired of the war that we will abandon our efforts there.”
Continue reading “Preparations for War in Southeast Asia, 1965”
By CDR Brian Schulz, Commanding Officer, Navy Information Operations Command Yokosuka, Japan.
When football pundits talk about the “great” head coaches, their assessments turn to championships and then inevitably to the “coaching tree.” This idea of a coaching tree is identifying what former assistant coaches under a head coach went on to their own success as a head coach. Bill Parcells, one of the all time greats (I said “one of,” don’t stop reading now out of Giants/Patriots/Jets/Cowboys hatred), has a coaching tree that includes Bill Belichick, Sean Payton, Mike Zimmer, Anthony Lynn, Doug Marrone, and Todd Bowles…all former assistants under Parcells and now all pretty successful head coaches (or former, in Bowles case) in their own right.
Continue reading “Coaching Trees (NSGA Kunia 2002-2004) (Guest Post)”
In the late hours of May 1, 2011, a quiet garrison town in Abbottabad became the stage for one of the most consequential covert operations in modern military history. Known as Operation Neptune Spear, the mission ended a nearly decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden—the architect of the September 11 attacks—and reshaped the global fight against terrorism.
Continue reading “Operation Neptune Spear: The Night the Hunt Ended”
Originally posted in 2020:
Last week, I came across an announcement that Scott O’Grady had been nominated by President Trump to be the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. When I heard the news, I was transported back to my junior officer days in the mid-1990’s. If you were alive and old enough at the time, you probably remember Scott O’Grady. He came to International attention in June 1995 when the F-16 he was piloting was shot down over Bosnia. Back in those days, Scott O’Grady was an Air Force junior officer enforcing the no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of the American contingent supporting of NATO’s Operation DENY FLIGHT.
Station HYPO 