(Submarine # 2) Underway off the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, N.Y., circa 1909. Note the coal-handling facility in the center background. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.Plunger (SS2), renamed A1. Port bow, moored beside the Shark (SS8), 1902
She is not to be confused with the experimental submarine Plunger which was evaluated by the U.S. Navy from 1898 to 1900, but not accepted or commissioned.
Assigned to the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island for experimental torpedo work, Plunger operated locally from that facility for the next two years, a period of time broken only by an overhaul at the Holland yard at New Suffolk from March to November 1904. Besides testing machinery, armament and tactics, the submarine torpedo boat also served as a training ship for the crews of new submersibles emerging from the builder’s yards.
In August 1905, Plunger underwent two weeks of upkeep before leaving the yard on 22 August. She was towed by the tugApache to New York City, where Plunger conducted trials near the home of President Theodore Roosevelt. Upon the submarine’s arrival that afternoon, she moored alongside the tug and prepared for a visit from President Roosevelt.
The unmanned surface vessel Sea Hunter transits underneath the Sydney Harbor bridge as part of a scheduled port visit. Photo: US Navy/Ensign Pierson Hawkins.
Several unmanned surface vessels – Ranger, Mariner, Seahawk, and Sea Hunter – made their way to Sydney ahead of bilateral exercises with the Royal Australian Navy.
USVs Ranger, Mariner, Seahawk, and Sea Hunter from Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One (USVDIV-1) arrived in Australia and travelled underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge for a scheduled port visit on 24 October.
It’s understood an ongoing Pacific Fleet exercise will test, develop, and evaluate the integration of unmanned platforms into fleet operations to create warfighting advantages.
During the exercises, USVDIV-1 will collaborate with the RAN on testing unmanned systems in concert with industry partners to advance a shared understanding of these capabilities to meet strategic requirements.
“I look forward to furthering the strong relationship our navies have worked hard to create,” according to US Navy Commander Jeremiah Daley, commanding officer of USVDIV-1.
“Our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific relies upon developing these advanced capabilities that will create the asymmetric warfighting advantages to deter aggression in contested environments.”
The Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Oakland has also arrived in Sydney alongside the USVs and all five US Navy vessels are being employed in the ongoing US Pacific Fleet exercise Integrated Battle Problem 23.2.
It’s hoped the exercise will develop concepts of operations for future unmanned programs of record and further integrated USVs into routine operations alongside manned surface combatants.
“In order to develop a program as different and disruptive as small, medium, and large USVs, integrating with allies and partners early and consistently in its development is key to our success,” said CDR Daley.
“Through exercises like IBP 23.2 and Autonomous Warrior, we continue to learn from experience in an operational theatre and deepen our interoperable strength.”
USVDIV-1’s mission is to test, evaluate, and operate in support of integrating USVs into fleet operations and provide recommendations to Navy leadership on the development of unmanned systems.
It’s understood the USV vessels are manned while conducting harbour operations, however, they are 100 per cent autonomous with no crew aboard at sea under normal operation.
The US 7th Fleet is the US Navy’s largest forward-deployed numbered fleet and routinely interacts and operates with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
The Australian Defence Force has previously partnered with defence industry companies in the development of autonomous vehicles, including autonomous underwater vehicles for the Royal Australian Navy.
The U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Saint Paul (CA-73) off Wonsan, Korea, with guns ready for bombardment, 20 April 1951.
Photo #: 80-G-440021 USS Buck (DD-761), USS Wisconsin (BB-64) and USS Saint Paul (CA-73) Steaming in close formation during operations off the Korean coast. Photo is dated 22 February 1952. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.
Her keel was laid down as Rochester on 3 February 1943 by the Bethlehem Steel Company in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was launched on 16 September 1944 sponsored by Mrs. Marie Gordon McDonough,[1] wife of John J. McDonough, then mayor of Saint Paul; and commissioned on 17 February 1945, Captain Ernest H. von Heimburg in command. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 31 July 1978, and was sold for scrapping in January 1980. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Saint_Paul_(CA-73)
With a 100-bed medical complex on board, she acts as a floating medical facility during times of crisis or war. https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/our-organisation/the-fighting-arms/royal-fleet-auxiliary/casualty-ship/rfa-argus
Captain Martin Clemens (rear centre), a coastwatcher on Guadalcanal, provided intelligence to Allied forces during the battle for the island (August 1942 – February 1943).
After Imperial Japan formally kicked off World War II in the Pacific by attacking the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941, Japanese forces made lightning-fast advances in the South Pacific. By early 1942, Japan had occupied all of southeast Asia, threatening India in the west, Australia in the south, and Hawaii in the east.
Surging from former Imperial German island colonies in the central Pacific that Japan had acquired at the end of World War I, they quickly overran island archipelagos, such as the Admiralties and the Solomons in the far South Pacific, close to Australia. These remote islands often had plantations owned by individuals and corporations and administered by Australian, New Zealand, and British nationals.
While the Japanese conquest was rapid, it had been long anticipated by Australian, New Zealand and British military intelligence agencies. As far back as the 1920s and 1930s, plantation owners and managers on these remote islands were actively recruited, trained, and supplied with radios and other equipment by Australian military intelligence. When the war broke out, these civilian volunteers became the Coastwatchers. The force grew to over six hundred personnel serving behind the Japanese lines.
Formally known by names such as the Coast Watch Organisation, Combined Field Intelligence Service or Section C, Allied Intelligence Bureau, they began to observe and report enemy movements and rescue nationals from Allied nations stranded by the Japanese onslaught. The work was dangerous, and in addition to working behind Japanese lines with extremely limited resources and supplies, they had to contend with life-threatening tropical diseases. Many civilian Coastwatchers were rugged, independent types who had good relations with and the trust of local Indigenous island peoples. Some of the islands had Indigenous police, constabulary, and paramilitary organizations in place before the war. When the Imperial Japanese demonstrated their typical contempt for conquered peoples and implemented heavy-handed control over the Indigenous populations, the Coastwatchers soon had many ready recruits.
With radar in its infancy, and given the vast distances involved, the Coastwatchers and their Indigenous allies became indispensable in providing early warning of Imperial Japanese aircraft and ships headed out to attack the Allies in various island campaigns, such as Guadalcanal. U.S. Admiral William Halsey Jr., the acerbic commander of Naval forces during the Solomon Islands campaign, gave high praise to the Coastwatchers: “The Coastwatchers saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the South Pacific.”
Many downed Allied fliers and shipwrecked sailors were also rescued by Indigenous people working with coastwatcher organizations, who sometimes had to barter for these airmen with neutral tribes who had not yet encountered the Japanese. When future U.S. president John F. Kennedy’s patrol boat, PT 109, was destroyed in action against the Japanese Navy in the waters around Guadalcanal, Kennedy, and the surviving members of his crew were rescued through the efforts of an Australian coastwatcher. In July 2022, Australian Coastwatchers James Burrowes and Ronald George Lee were still living and were honored in a wreath-laying ceremony by U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President Kennedy, at the Australian War Memorial in the capital city of Canberra.
Solomon Islander scouts display Japanese weapons and flags captured during Carlson’s patrol.
“The event was a very special and personal acknowledgment by Ambassador Kennedy and the US government of the role we had as Aussie Coastwatchers eight decades ago. I am proud at 98 to meet Her Excellency and share Coastwatcher stories. The time I spent in the Solomons and other locations as a Coastwatcher is as vivid today as it was then. It has been an honor to participate in this memorial event,” Australian World War II veteran Mr. Ronald (Dixie) George Lee said.
As the war in the South Pacific progressed, the traditional role of coast watching organizations to observe, and report expanded to the even more dangerous work of reconnoitering potential landing beaches as the Allies began their strategic island-hopping campaign towards the home islands of Japan. Forehand knowledge of the reefs, tides, and shore conditions of remote, Japanese-held islands was critical to successful amphibious assaults. Although many Coastwatchers were formally commissioned as officers in the Australian Naval Reserves, for their protection in case of capture, this was disregarded by the Japanese. In 1942, 17 New Zealand Coastwatchers were captured in the Gilbert Islands and were executed by the Japanese in October 1942 following an American air raid, part of the preparation for the attack on Tarawa by the U.S. Marines.
Although they rarely engaged in open combat, the Coast Watchers performed missions, such as beach reconnaissance and organizing local forces in occupied territory, that would later come under unconventional warfare units such as the U.S. Navy SEALS, the British Special Air Service, and U.S. Special Forces.
The ship was assigned to the Harwich Force during the war, but saw little action as she was completed less than a year before the war ended. Briefly assigned to the Atlantic Fleet in early 1919, Curacoa was deployed to the Baltic in May to support anti-Bolshevik forces during the British campaign in the Baltic during the Russian Civil War. Shortly thereafter the ship struck a naval mine and had to return home for repairs.
After spending the rest of 1919 and 1920 in reserve, she rejoined the Atlantic Fleet until 1928, aside from a temporary transfer to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1922–1923 to support British interests in Turkey during the Chanak Crisis. Curacoa was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1929.
In 1933, Curacoa became a training ship and in July 1939, two months before the start of the Second World War, she was converted into an anti-aircraft cruiser. She returned to service in January 1940 and, while providing escort in the Norwegian Campaign that April, was damaged by German aircraft. After repairs were completed that year, she escorted convoys in and around the British Isles for two years. In late 1942, during escort duty, she was accidentally sliced in half and sunk by the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary, with the loss of 337 men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Curacoa_(D41)
INDIAN OCEAN (Dec. 22, 2020) A U.S. Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 164 (Reinforced), 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, lands on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8). The Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group and the 15th MEU are conducting operations in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jacob D. Bergh) 201222-N-LR905-1307
