Into Harm’s Way: the world’s deepest shipwreck and her heroic last stand
FeaturedWIB historyWIB sea January 5, 2022
Just over four miles beneath the sea, an American destroyer sits upright on the bottom of the sea. How she got there is a story worth remembering.
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Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Division Story by Keegan Rammel Friday, June 5, 2020 Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD) recently worked alongside Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and Naval Sea Logistics Center (NSLC) to establish a new official online database called eForms for all Navy shock data... Read more
For a Brief Inglorious Moment, the U.S. Navy Had a Nuclear-Powered Wetsuit
WIB historyWIB sea September 7, 2018
Originally published on Nov. 26, 2014. You get pretty cold pretty fast when you’re wet. Water absorbs more heat than air—and absorbs it 20 times faster. Without some kind of protection, people can suffer hypothermia even in warm tropical seas. There are several ways to stay warm in the... Read more
A Half Century of Half Aircraft Carriers
WIB historyWIB sea September 18, 2017
This story originally appeared on Feb. 28, 2015. Starting in the 1960s, the world’s leading navies experimented with a new kind of warship. Heavily-armed and sporting huge flight decks for helicopters, the vessels were hybrids—not quite cruisers, not quite aircraft carriers. Ungainly and in many cases conceptually flawed, the... Read more
The U.S. Navy has begun testing a new, radar-evading, air-launched anti-ship missile — a big step forward in the sailing branch’s march toward a more lethal fleet. In the next few years, the Navy could add three new ship-killing weapons to its warplanes and surface ships, augmenting existing Harpoon... Read more
These Weird Warplanes Didn’t Need Runways
Uncategorized August 15, 2015
Originally published on July 29, 2013. Warplanes’ biggest vulnerability is their runways. Modern airfields are no match for modern weapons; bunker-busting munitions can crater the thickest concrete. There was a brief period after World War II when the U.S. military thought it had a solution: simply design planes that... Read more
Bad Guys Beware—The Navy’s Killer Drone Is About to Get a Lot More Dangerous
WIB sea November 15, 2013
The U.S. Navy has tweaked the specifications of its new robotic warplane, newly stressing its ability evade enemy radars and refuel in mid-air. The result will be a much deadlier killer drone—and one that over time, with upgrades, could grow even more dangerous to America’s enemies. It almost didn’t... Read more
Pratt & Whitney turbofan whining, tires slamming on the steel deck in puffs of white smoke, the X-47B killer drone prototype arrived on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt on Nov. 9. Over the next several days the kite-shaped X-47B launched, landed and taxied in increasingly complex wind conditions,... Read more
A new era in aviation dawned when the U.S. Navy’s X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System armed drone demonstrator completed its first-ever arrested landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush off the Virginia coast Wednesday. After completing a second autonomous arrested landing on the nuclear-powered carrier, the 60-foot-wingspan... Read more