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Warship Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022: Savo Pig Boat Avenger
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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Brown Shoes of Fighting Six
80 years ago: Four aviators of Fighter Squadron Six (VF-6) — two of which are enlisted “silver eagle” NAP pilots– pose beside a Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat (Bureau # 5126) on board the Yorktown-class...
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Museum Ship Maintenance via 3D Printing
USS Massachusetts (BB-59), the third of four SoDak super dreadnoughts built during WWII, turned 80 this year. USS Massachusetts underway somewhere in the pacific (1943) Of course, she only spent five...
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The Old Breed’s Last Bolt-Action Battle
Some 80 years ago this month, a scratch force of Marines waded ashore on a little-known island in the Pacific, with their beloved ’03s in hand, determined to stop the Rising Sun. Some eight months...
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USCG at the ‘Canal
In July 1940, the Coast Guard numbered just 13,766 officers and men of all ranks, spread out from the Philipines to the Virgin Islands. By July 1942, it would balloon to 58,998 men (and was starting...
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Playing the hits
Happy National Vinyl Record Day! Finnish soldiers play a gramophone they found on 8 August 1941 in recently-liberated Jaakkima, Finland (today’s Yakkima, Russia), during the opening offensive of the...
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Last ‘Ace in a Day’
On this day in 1945, LT Oscar Francis Perdomo, USAAF, became the last American Ace of WWII, bagging four Ki-84 “Frank” fighters and one Yokosuka “Willow” trainer. (While the 507th Fighter Group...
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Army Gets in the Game against Goering
While Pacific-based U.S. Army Air Forces fighter pilots, running P-39s and P-40s, had already taken a few bites out of the assorted Japanese air forces at Pearl Harbor, the CBI, and over Guadalcanal,...
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1st USS Jacob Jones found
Laid down in Camden, New Jersey in August 1914, the day after the Kaiser’s troops crossed into Belgium, the Tucker-class tin can USS Jacob Jones (Destroyer No. 61) was the first U.S. Navy vessel named...
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Starvation Island
Via the National Museum of the U.S. Marine Corps: The decision by the Navy to remove all transports and cargo vessels around Guadalcanal on 9 August 1942 [following the slaughter of TG 62.6 in the...
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80 Years Ago: Welcome to the Fleet, Big Al
Ordered on April Fool’s Day 1939 from Norfolk Navy Yard, at a time when Czeechlovakia had ceased to exist and Poland was looking to their borders, Battleship No. 60 would be the final...
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Avenger down der periscope
Paintings of Naval Aviation during World War II: Abbott Collection. #98: “The Kill” Artwork by Robert Benney. “In this dramatic presentation of sea-sky battle, a Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber, bomb...
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Remembering Dieppe at 80
The colossal foul-up that was Operation Jubilee or the Dieppe Raid, using a brigade-sized mix of mostly Canadian troops augmented by a few U.S. Army Rangers and Allied Commandos to capture and hold a...
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80 Years Ago: The Fighting Cocks Clock In
Formed in January 1941 as the USAAF’s first 67th Pursuit (Interceptor) Squadron, the “Fighting Cocks” trained on laughably obsolete Seversky P-35s at Harding Army Airfield in Baton Rouge, Louisiana....
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Poland’s 9mm 1911(ish) Powerhouse
Arising from the ashes of the old Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian Empires in 1918 – countries that had wiped Poland off the map in 1795 – modern Poland was born immediately into war, having to...
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Warship Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022: Last Dance of the Prancing Dragon
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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Admiral Halsey’s Saddle
Fancy tooled leather Western-style saddle, extensively decorated with 166 silver pieces, presented to Admiral William F. Halsey, Commander, U.S. Third Fleet, by the Reno, Nevada, Chamber of Commerce...
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Just Extra Mags and a Kukri
A small-framed soldier of the 4th Battalion, 4th Prince of Wales’s Own (PWO) Gurkha Rifles, engaged in house-to-house fighting in a Burmese village, CBI Theatre, 1945. Raised in 1941, 4/4 saw WWII...
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Ulster Glider Marksman
80 Years Ago: 29 August 1942. A sniper with British glider troops. He was with the 1st Battalion, The Ulster Rifles, 1st Airborne Division. (By War Office official photographer LT Spender. Imperial...
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Battleship No.35 Sails Again!
Ordered under the administration of William Howard Taft, USS Texas (BB-35) was laid down at Newport News in April 1911, making her hull some 111 years old. After service in both World Wars, the “Old...
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