US Navy Archives - Mechtraveller

Will USS Kidd be playing Greyhound again?

Alastair — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 14:54:01 +0000

Tom Hanks’ successful war movie Greyhound (2020), shot principally on the WW2 Fletcher-class destroyer USS Kidd, now a museum ship in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is to have a sequel. The movie industry news media are talking about ‘Greyhound 2’ although very little has been confirmed. We know that Hanks will once again play Commander Ernst […]

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Dry-docking a Battleship

Alastair — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:03:51 +0000

If all is going as planned, the giant Iowa-class battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) is on her way back down the Delaware River today, returning to her permanent mooring on the Camden waterfront after a 91 day visit to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for maintenance and repair. Most of that time was spent in dry […]

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Did Bismarck sink in a sea of coloured water?

Alastair — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 16:24:53 +0000

The answer is NO, but what’s interesting is that if she had made her ill-fated breakout into the Atlantic a year later, she might have been. By then, if the same ships had intercepted her they would have been carrying red (HMS Rodney) and yellow (HMS King George V) dyed shells. The French had developed […]

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Possible New Ship Museum on Lake Erie

Alastair — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 09:12:34 +0000

The city of Erie in Pennsylvania on the east bank of Lake Erie, is considering the creation of a new ship museum using a Cold War era, Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate. The connection is Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the 19th century American naval commander, who is a local and national hero for defeating […]

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Jacksonville Naval Museum dreams may finally come true with the arrival of USS Orleck

Alastair — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 11:05:23 +0000

The Jacksonville Historic Naval Ship Association (JHNSA) has been trying to secure a warship to be the centrepiece of the city’s huge downtown waterfront regeneration programme, and the first warship museum in Florida, for almost 12 years. By 2018 they had settled on the former cold-war guided-missile destroyer, USS Charles F. Adams, which was lying […]

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Grumman Wildcat FM2

Alastair — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 11:35:26 +0000

The Wildcat is an amazing aircraft that filled a much needed gap in the U.S. and Allied navies’ arsenal at the start of WWII. Descriptions of it, by pilots and historians often use words like “pugnacious”, “heroic” and “rugged”, which it certainly was, but they all recognise that the Wildcat was outclassed by its faster […]

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New movie focuses on U.S. Navy pilots Tom Hudner and Jesse Brown in the Korean War

Alastair — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 09:43:50 +0000

Filming starts next month on the next big-budget war movie, Devotion, which tells the real life story of U.S. Navy pilots Tom Hudner and Jesse Brown. The History The duo came from completely different, post-World War II, backgrounds. Tom was a white New Englander from a wealthy family who graduated from Annapolis (1947). Jesse was […]

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The day a President’s son watched a President’s brother die in World War II

Alastair — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 16:50:10 +0000

Many people know that President Kennedy’s elder brother died tragically during World War II, in a colossal airborne explosion over East Anglia in the UK on 12 Aug 1944. Not many, including myself, knew that the event was witnessed by Col. Elliott Roosevelt, son of FDR who was President at the time. Ironically, Joseph P. […]

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