SC Air/Surface Search Radar
The CXAM, the US Navy’s first truly successful radar set, was too large to be fitted to smaller combatants like destroyers. It could only be fitted on ships the size of cruisers and larger, most […]
Articles by PE Matt
The Battle of Savo Island
As the Marines consolidated their gains on Guadalcanal and set out to capture the all-important Lunga point airfield, the Japanese immediately responded to their incursion. The unit responsible for the naval defense of the “south […]
The Guadalcanal Landings
As the largest invasion fleet assembled so far in the war approached Guadalcanal to begin the landing operations, the first order of business for VAdm Frank J. Fletcher’s Task Force 61 was to clear the […]
The Guadalcanal Campaign
Kido Butai’s defeat at the Battle of Midway meant that American positions in the Central Pacific, including Hawaii, were now secure. US Navy Commander in Chief Admiral Ernest J. King now felt that the time […]
Boeing XB-15
By the mid-1930s the US Army Air Corps (USAAC) saw the need for a new type of long-range bomber. The procurement of the Boeing B-9 and the Martin B-10 and B-12 series had filled an […]
11-Go Air Search Radar
A Japanese scientific delegation under Cdr Yoji Ito was sent to Germany in February 1941. Although the professional relationship between the Japanese and the Germans was far less cordial than that of the Americans and […]
Consolidated PB2Y Coronado
With the first versions of the PBY Catalina beginning to be supplied to the Navy in 1935, attention turned to potential successor machines with better performance. Both Sikorsky and Consolidated were solicited for proposals, and […]
Sikorsky XPBS
As the US Navy was beginning to receive the first prototypes of the aircraft that would become the PBY Catalina, it simultaneously began to solicit proposals for the eventual replacement of this flying boat. The […]
The Career of the I-25 – Part Two
When I-25 arrived at her berth in Yokosuka harbour, her pilot, Nobuo Fujita, was surprised to receive orders to report to Naval General Headquarters in Tokyo. At first he feared that he was to be […]
The Career of the I-25 – Part One
Several navies experimented with submarine-launched aircraft, but few embraced the practice as whole-heartedly as the Japanese. Throughout the 1920s several experimental aircraft were developed, and submarines modified with water-tight compartments to carry them, before the […]