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T-AGSEs Surface
An interesting addition to the Bollinger-built 87-foot Marine Protector class patrol boats for the Coast Guard in 2008 was four units– paid for wholly by the Navy– that would serve in two special...
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Marianas Lightning Storm
Exercise Cope North 2025 has seen at least four different F-35 fifth-gen fighter operators conducting combined operations from Guam. These include U.S. Air Force, Royal Australian Air Force No. 75...
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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025: Scary Freddy
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own,...
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Price check, UAV
RQ-21A Blackjack UAV on launcher Ever wondered what medium-sized Group 3 UAVs run these days? How about this contract announcement this week from DOD, emphasis mine. Keep in mind the figure includes...
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Powell, Awash
80 years ago today, on 27 February 1945, the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Halsey Powell (DD-686) was seen in a series of period Kodachromes during a very wet replenishment near Japan alongside the fast...
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Holy Loch North
One of the aces in the hole for the old-school Polaris Fleet Ballistic Missile submarines and their Trident descendants was Refit Site One, hidden in Holy Loch, Scotland near the Firth of Clyde....
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Visiting an old friend for Mardi Gras
Mobile has long had a “Mardi Gras Ship” tradition with the Navy and Coast Guard, where a transiting surface warfare asset or cutter stops in and ties up downtown by the Civic Center across from Austal...
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Wurm Swim
An unusual sight some 80 years ago this month. Likely on the Wurm River system near recently captured Aachen, Germany, March 1945, we see a great period original Kodachrome capturing U.S. Army...
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Warship Wednesday, March 5, 2025: Poster Child for the Donald Duck Navy
Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own,...
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Battleship Texas has new permanent-ish home, afloat at Galveston
Three years after being uprooted from her long-time shallow berth under the San Jacinto Monument– where she rested for nearly 75 years– USS Texas (Battleship No. 35), the country’s only Great War-era...
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What a Difference 7 Years Makes
While off the Virginia Capes on 7 March 1949, a twin-engine P2V-3C Neptune able to carry atomic ordnance lifted off from the brand new Midway-class supercarrier USS Coral Sea (CVB-43)— via an...
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Transcom Asks Lawmakers for ‘up to’ 10 new (to MSC) vessels
NORFOLK, Va. (Apr. 11, 2022) Military Sealift Command in March chartered tugboat Signet Warhorse I to tow Large, Medium-Speed, Roll-on/Roll-off (LSMR) ship USNS Shughart (T-AKR 295) from Newport News...
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Pirate Greyhound Hull Comparisons
In something fairly unique in military history, two destroyers with the same name are out of the water in drydock at the same time– and both are authorized to fly Jolly Rogers. Probably the...
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That’s going to buff out…
80 years ago, the “long hulled” Essex-class fleet carrier USS Randolph (CV-15) is seen with damage to her aft flight deck as the result of a Japanese Yokosuka P1Y Ginga “Frances” kamikaze attack...
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Zouaves and surfboats!
From Osprey’s upcoming title, American Civil War Amphibious Tactics, by Ron Field, illustrated by Steve Noon: Hawkins’ Zouaves At Hatteras Inlet, August 28, 1861 Elements of the 9th New York Infantry,...
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Air Force Drops $2B (more) on Long Range Strike Game
From yesterday’s DOD Contract announcements, emphasis mine: Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, Orlando, Florida, has been awarded a not-to-exceed $1,925,877,406 firm-fixed-price, undefinitized...
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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Here we see, some 80 years ago this month, four leaf clover-wearing General Motors FM-2 Wildcats and Grumman TBM-3 Avengers of Composite Squadron (VC) 93 aboard the Casablanca-class escort carrier USS...
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Renegade Gunfighter
Some 50 years ago, a spectacular image of a Vought F-8J Crusader of VF-24, the “Fighting Renegades,” in flight, 1975. U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.7337.016 Assigned to...
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Zippo Monitor, in Vivid Color!
Early 1969 U.S. Navy images from the National Archives, show a “Zippo” flamethrower installed on a 56-foot Armored Troop Carrier monitor– an armored LCM (6) landing craft– in testing along an unnamed...
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Uncle Chester Shuffles out for One Last Go
Named in honor of the fleet admiral that oversaw the Pacific War, the USS Nimitz (CVAN/CVN-68) was ordered on 31 March 1967 and commissioned just over eight years later on 11 April 1975. USS Nimitz...
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