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The Old Salt
An “Old Salt” and a young sailor stroll past a recruiting poster in 1920. It highlights what their boss, Secretary of the Navy Josephus “Cup O Joe” Daniels, wanted to highlight to attract the best and...
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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023: A Dozen Stars and a Wigwam
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their...
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Deeds Not Words…
After almost eight years locked in port as part of the Navy’s troubled CG Phased Modernization Plan, the Tico-class Aegis cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64) saw blue water again last week on a short...
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2,960 Scooters Can’t Be Wrong
Affectionately later known as the “Heinemann’s Hot Rod,” the “Scooter,” and the “Tinkertoy,” the first hand-built prototype XA4D-1 Skyhawk attack aircraft, BuNo 137812, flown by Douglas test pilot...
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Dragging out that Navy Naming Conventions Soapbox
It’s like the Navy’s naming conventions are done with the Magic 8-ball or Ouija board over the past few years. Or perhaps are just hyper-political and just flat-out done for optics. Maybe it’s a blend...
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The big Roman off the Cape
Image from the Italian-built semi-rigid airship Roma, overflying the bombing of the unmanned ex-German Wiesbaden-class scout cruiser SMS Frankfurt off Cape Henry, Virginia, on 18 July 1921. Note the...
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80 Years Ago: Yanks and Ozzies Team Up to Close the Bismarck Sea
In early March 1943, Japanese RADM Masatomi Kimura was tasked with carrying out Operation 81, a scratch troop convoy running from Simpson Harbour in Rabaul to Lae, New Guinea. The run was short...
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Vale, Ricou Browning, Daddy Frogman
One of Florida’s greats, and the last of the classic 1950s Universal horror film actors, Ricou Browning, has passed this last week, aged 93, at his home in Southwest Ranches, Florida. Raised on Jensen...
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Key West Decommissioning, and (Commissioning)
Capping an impressive 36-year career, the third U.S. Navy ship (the first being a Civil War gunboat while the second was a WWII-era frigate) to be named after Key West, Florida is headed for imminent...
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Key West ‘foils
In my post Monday about the USS Key West‘s pending decommissioning, and the fact that the city island she is named in honor of is set to celebrate the commissioning next month of a new destroyer...
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Warship Wednesday, March 8, 2023: USS FBI
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their...
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Gunboat Subs
Official description: Six U.S. Navy submarines maneuvering in line abreast formation during exercises off Block Island, Rhode Island, in April 1947. The nearest submarine is USS Sarda (SS-488) while...
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Second CG finishes Modernization Program
Built at Ingalls in Pascagoula, USS Chosin was ordered in 1986 and delivered in 1991. She has been in modernization since December 2019– but that is soon set to end. Official caption: PEARL HARBOR...
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80 Years Ago: Calvertville Mosquito Station
The U.S. Navy PT Boat Base at Tulagi (Tulaghi) in the British Florida (Solomon) Islands came about after the island was liberated by Allied forces– primarily the 1st Marine Raiders– in August 1942...
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21st-Century Visual Aircraft Recognition
Spotted on a Ukrainian coastal craft recently: Besides the normal MiGs and Sukhois, note the assorted drone silhouettes. Of note, the U.S. has donated 62 “coastal and riverine patrol boats” to Ukraine...
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Warship Wednesday, March 22, 2023: Herr Ericsson’s Original Tin Can
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their...
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Cyclones almost gone
Built in the late 1990s, the Navy’s Cyclone-class coastal patrol ships (PC) are almost all gone. Built by Bollinger Shipyards in Louisiana, the same yard that has constructed over 170 similar albeit...
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Super Shorties Spotted in 3rd FLT
A newly commissioned littoral combat ship was recently spotted with her crew sporting some very compact little carbines. Based in San Diego, the USS Mobile, an Independence-class LCS variant that only...
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80 Years Ago: Patching Up the Swayback Maru
On 27 March 1943, the Pensacola-class heavy cruiser USS Salt Lake City (CA-25), the bruiser of RADM Charles McMorris’s Task Group 16.6, steaming along with the much smaller Omaha-class light cruiser...
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And in (sometimes awful) Austal news…
Over the weekend the Navy commissioned its latest warship, USS Santa Barbara (LCS 32), the newest (16th) Independence-variant littoral combat ship, in San Diego where she will be homeported. As noted...
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