Her keel was laid down on 20 November 1939 by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company of Newport News, Virginia. She was launched on 21 November 1941 sponsored by Mrs. Lewis C. Robbins, daughter of Indiana governor Henry F. Schricker, and commissioned on 30 April 1942, Captain Aaron Stanton Merrill in command. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indiana_(BB-58)
HMS Havelock was laid down at the Harland and Wolff Ltd shipyard at Belfast on 12 December 1914. The ship was named General Grant in honour of the United States General Ulysses S Grant, however as the United States was still neutral, the ship was hurriedly renamed HMS M2 on 31 May 1915. She was then named HMS Havelock on 20 June 1915.
HMS Havelock sailed for the Dardanelles in June 1915. She remained in the Eastern Mediterranean until returning to England in January 1916. She then served as a guard ship at Lowestoft. She was decommissioned in May 1919, and disarmed in June 1920. Sold for breaking up in May 1921, she was retained in reserve until resold on 25 June 1927 to the Ward shipyard at Preston for breaking up.
The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Eaton (DDE-510) following collision with the battleship USS Wisconsin (BB-64). On 6 May 1956, off the Virginia Capes, Wisconsin collided with the Eaton in thick fog while steaming at high speed (20 knots). The collision caused serious damage to both ships, with the Eaton contacting the battleship’s bow on the starboard side forward of the bridge, which crushed to port side and broke the keel.
Built by Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, she was commissioned in Long Beach, California, on 19 March 1994. The keynote speaker for the ceremony was then-Secretary of the Navy, John H. Dalton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Curtis_Wilbur_(DDG-54)
This ship is the 29th destroyer of her class. USS Oscar Austin was the 17th ship of this class to be built by Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, and construction began on 9 October 1997. She was launched and christened on 7 November 1998. On 19 August 2000 she was commissioned at Bath, Maine. As of July 2020 the ship is part of Destroyer Squadron 26 based out of Naval Station Norfolk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oscar_Austin
Constitution got underway with more than 300 guests to celebrate America’s independence. (U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Matthew R. Fairchild/Released) 140704-N-OG138-866
USS Plunger (SS-2) was one of the earliest submarines of the United States Navy. She was the lead boat of her class and was later renamed A-1 when she was designated an A-type submarine. She is not to be confused with the experimental submarine Plunger which was evaluated by the U.S. Navy from 1898 to 1900 Plunger was originally laid down on 21 May 1901 at Elizabethport, New Jersey, at Lewis Nixon’s Crescent Shipyard. Arthur Leopold Busch supervised the construction of the A-Class submarines built there. The prototype Fulton experimental craft was laid down at Isaac Rice’s Electric Boat Company prior to these first A-class submarines.
She was launched on 1 February 1902, and commissioned at the Holland Torpedo Boat Company yard at New Suffolk, New York on 19 September 1903.
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–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 tug Apache 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 Theodore Roosevelt. Note 3rd CO name – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_W.Nimitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Plunger(SS-2)
After the test trip the Panama Canal passed and entered the Asiatic Fleet base in the Philippines , from which it left in 1932 to protect US interests threatened by the brief war between the Japanese Empire and China in January. At the beginning of 1934 he returned to Pearl Harbor where he joined the Pacific Fleet , then in the summer he took President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a cruise that ended in the Caribbean in Portland. The cruiser also served as a presidential ship, in detail in October 1935, in 1938 and again in January 1939 during a combined US navy exercise in the Atlantic Ocean ; in 1937 he also attended the inauguration of the Golden Gate Bridge . After extensive revisions lasted for much of 1939, he anchored in Pearl Harbor, from where he left at the end of 1940 to return to the Asiatic Fleet . On the morning of December 8, 1941, he escaped for a few hours to the devastating Japanese raids that struck the archipelago at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor . L ‘ Admiral Thomas Hart, commander in chief of the fleet, left the Philippines with all the ships and reached first Darwin in Australia , then joined the Anglo-Dutch forces that were preparing to fight the Japanese invasion convoys in the Dutch East Indies .
Damaged by an airstrike in January 1942, Houston only came into contact with Japanese warships on February 27 during the Battle of the Java Sea, which ended in disastrous results for the Allies . He received orders to fall back into the port of Tjilatjap on the southern coast of Java but was identified and sunk by numerous Japanese units on the night between 28 and 1 March; the approximately 370 survivors of the crew were almost all captured and lived a long imprisonment for the rest of the Second World War . https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Houston_(CA-30)