On This Day – 7th/8th May 1942
The Battle of the Coral Sea is fought to stop the Japanese-planned capture of Port Moresby. It is a confused engagement and is the first major naval battle fought without visual contact being made between the surface forces of the opposing fleets. Continue reading “WWII – Battle of the Coral Sea”
27 June
During the Russo-Japanese War, sailors start a mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin.
31 May
The British Grand Fleet under the command of Admiral John Jellicoe, and Vice-Admiral David Beatty, engage the Imperial German Navy under the command of Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer and Vice-Admiral Franz von Hipper in the largest naval battle of the war, which proves indecisive.
Continue reading “1916 -World War One the Battle of Jutland”
27 April
Sultana was a Mississippi River side-wheel steamboat that exploded on this day in 1865. Continue reading “1865 – The ‘Sultana’ disaster”
18 April
Operation Praying Mantis was an attack on this day in 1988, by U.S. forces within Iranian territorial waters in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf during the Iran–Iraq war and the subsequent damage to an American warship. Continue reading “1988 – Operation Praying Mantis”
April
USS Thresher (SSN-593) was the lead boat of her class of nuclear-powered attack submarines in the United States Navy. She was lost with all hands during deep-diving tests on 10 April 1963.
Continue reading “1963 – Submarine USS Thresher lost at sea”
24 March
HMS Eurydice was a 26-gun Royal Navy corvette which was the victim of one of Britain’s worst peace-time naval disasters when she sank in 1878. Continue reading “1878 – The British frigate HMS Eurydice sinks, killing more than 300”
20 March
USS Langley (CV-1/AV-3) was the United States Navy’s first aircraft carrier, converted in 1920 from the collier USS Jupiter (AC-3), and also the U.S. Navy’s first turbo-electric-powered ship. Continue reading “1922 – The USS Langley is commissioned”
2 March
The Battle of the Bismarck Sea (2–4 March 1943) took place in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) during World War II when aircraft of the U.S. Fifth Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) attacked a Japanese convoy carrying troops to Lae, New Guinea. Most of the task force was destroyed, and Japanese troop losses were heavy. Continue reading “1943 – World War II: Battle of the Bismarck Sea”
28 February
The Battle of Sunda Strait was a naval battle which occurred during World War II in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra. Continue reading “1942 – The Battle of Sunda Strait”
25 February
USS Ranger (CV-4) was the first ship of the United States Navy to be designed and built from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. Ranger was a relatively small ship, closer in size and displacement to the first US carrier—Langley—than later ships. An island superstructure was not included in the original design, but was added after completion. Deemed too slow for use with the Pacific Fleet’s carrier task forces, the ship spent most of the war in the Atlantic Ocean.
10 February
HMS Dreadnought was a battleship of the Royal Navy that revolutionised naval power. Her entry into service in 1906 represented such a paradigm shift in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the “dreadnoughts”, as well as the class of ships named after her. The generation of ships she made obsolete became known as “pre-dreadnoughts”. She was the sixth ship of that name in the Royal Navy. Continue reading “1906 – HMS Dreadnought, the first of a revolutionary new breed of battleships is christened and launched by King Edward VII”
6 February
The Battle of San Domingo was a naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars fought on this day in 1806 between squadrons of French and British ships of the line off the southern coast of the French-occupied Spanish colonial Captaincy General of Santo Domingo (San Domingo in contemporary British English) in the Caribbean Sea. The French squadron, under Vice-Admiral Corentin Urbain Leissègues in the 120-gun Impérial, had sailed from Brest in December 1805, one of two squadrons intending to raid British trade routes as part of the Atlantic campaign of 1806. Continue reading “1806 – Battle of San Domingo”
31 December
The East India Company (EIC), also known as the Honourable East India Company and informally as John Company was an English and later British joint-stock company, formed to pursue trade with the East Indies, but which ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and Qing China. Continue reading “1600 – The British East India Company is chartered”
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