A contingent of U.S. Marine Corps intelligence personnel and native scouts shove their canoes off from the coast watchers’ station at Segi, New Guinea, on a routine patrol.

U.S. Navy

Coast Watchers in the Solomons

by John Brown

Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, coast watcher Cornelius Page, a plantation manager on Tabar Island 20 miles north of New Ireland in the South Pacific, reported by teleradio that Japanese planes were making reconnaissance flights over New Ireland and New Britain. Read more

Created solely from the artist’s imagination, this chromolithograph was issued to meet the Ameri- can public’s demand for revenge against Spain for the destruction of the USS Maine.

U.S. Navy

The USS Maine

By VanLoan Naisawald

Darkness had settled over the harbor, the lights along the shoreline casting a faint glow on the murky harbor water. Read more

Covered with oil and soaking wet, these men head for shore. The Coolidge can be seen in the background (left).

U.S. Navy

The Coolidge Goes Down

By Kevin Hymel

It was supposed to be a routine delivery of soldiers to the battlefields of Guadalcanal—but nothing in war is ever routine. Read more

U.S. Navy

Famous Marines: Smedley Butler

By Edward L. Bimberg

The annals of the United States Marine Corps are filled with the names of mavericks known not only for their fighting skills, but for their offbeat personalities as well. Read more

With their Ka-Bar fighting knives at their sides, U.S. Marines sit atop a pile of spent shells and provide cover for comrades moving inland on Iwo Jima.

U.S. Navy

The Marine Corps’ Ka-Bar Fighting Knife

By Mike Haskew

When Private Clarence Garrett of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, United States Marine Corps, clung to the loose black volcanic sand on the sloping beach of Iwo Jima on Feburary 19, 1945, he probably had no idea that his photograph was being taken. Read more

U.S. Navy

Saipan: A Crucial Foothold in the Marianas

By John Wukovits

On June 10, 1944, as his troop transport churned through the Pacific toward the Japanese-held island of Saipan, Pharmacist’s Mate First Class Stan Bowen wrote a letter to his sweetheart, Marge McCann. Read more

U.S. Navy

Hell’s Own Cesspool: Okinawa in WWII

By John Walker

On Easter morning, April 1, 1945, the Pacific island of Okinawa trembled beneath an earthshaking bombardment from American combat aircraft overhead and ships steaming offshore in preparation for an amphibious landing of unprecedented magnitude. Read more

U.S. Navy

The USS Macon

By John J. Geoghegan

It is sometimes difficult to understand just how immature aviation was in the 1920s and 1930s. Everything about flying was new. Read more

In this bleak painting by American combat artist Mitchell Jamieson, members of a Naval Armed Guard contingent load and fire the forward deck gun aboard a merchant ship in pitching seas. (Naval Historical Center)

U.S. Navy

Hazardous Duty with the Naval Armed Guard

By Russell Corder

They have been called “the other Navy,” the “Navy’s stepchildren,” and perhaps most fittingly, “the forgotten Navy.” Officially, however, they were the Naval Armed Guard or more simply the Armed Guard (AG). Read more

U.S. Navy

Seaplane Striking Force

By William H. Langenberg

The first few years after World War II were challenging ones for the U.S. Navy. Massive demobilization of personnel and rapid scrapping or retirement of ships created internal disruptions. Read more

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