THE STING OF THE WASP

The eighth USS Wasp (CV-7), an aircraft carrier, was built on a reduced size version of the Yorktown-class hull. The Navy sought to squeeze an air group onto a ship with nearly 25% less displacement than the Yorktown-class.  Wasp was constructed with low-power machinery, no armor, and - most significantly - no protection from torpedoes. The end result was a ship with major
inherent design flaws. These flaws, combined with the crew’s lack of damage control experience in the early WW II, would prove to be fatal on 15 September 1942, in the South Pacific.

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FANTASTIC VOYAGE: BATTLESHIP OREGON

It would be a race against time as the 10,000 ton warship made an agonizing 16,000 - mile trek around tip of South America hoping to do battle with the Spanish and win glory for the U.S. Navy.

This ship has many stories to tell about this journey ....and many have already been told.  I'm not saying this  article is a "tell all"...but hopefully if your interested in this vessel and what it accomplished...you may find a tad of data that you have not uncovered before.

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DEVELOPMENT OF: NIGHT FIGHTERS OF WW II

They went by many names: ‘The Black Cats....The Hunter-Killers..Night Torpedo men...and just plain Night fighters. Naval Aviators that flew in the night...that gained well-earned pride in WW II.

These men....these carrier and shore based attack pilots was un-excelled in achievement or individual excellence in World War II. This gratifying event....not withstanding, the story of night air combat in the U.S. Navy bears repeating since it is replete with lessons which could easily be learned at sickening cost in another war in a type of flying which is its natural descendant, all-weather air combat.

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BEDEVILING MYSTERY OF THE VANISHED CONESTOGA

One of the greatest ocean mysteries of the 20th century was the fate of a fleet tug of the U.S. Navy which vanished with all hands while on a routine peacetime voyage to a new home port.  A number of clues to her disappearance existed, but no one knew how to read those clues - and, unfortunately, no one seemed to care.

The year was 1921, a time of frustration for the Navy.  Still smarting from the disappearance of the collier Cyclops with 309 men in 1918, it was now doing battle with Gen. Billy Mitchell of the Army's Air Service who was trying to sink the Navy's battleships, literally and figuratively.  In the midst of that damage to its freputation, and pride, the Navy was forced to work its way through the disappearance of an additional ship which vanished from the face of the earth that year - the USS Conestoga.


PART I 

PART II
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GHOST OF THE MARY WALKER BAYOU

Slipping down the builders' ways in inter-war western Europe, the schooner St. Christopher survived World War Two while flying a German flag, lost all her masts along with her original name and worked as a tramp steamer for decades, changed names again, sailed the Caribbean as a tall ship under a host of swashbuckling owners and finally survived being grounded by a hurricane -twice.
Now this ole girl she really gets around....and as far as I know is still around today.

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