Sublime

Fresh from the first successful ground reconnaissance in the Central Pacific Theater, General Smith sent forth his VAC Recon Company like the twelve spies into Canaan. At Majuro Atoll, one of the VAC Recon platoon commanders, Lieutenant Harvey Weeks—a former Yale wrestler, former attorney, and former enlisted man—captured the Japanese commander wit

When, in 1915, a heavily armoured combat vehicle rolled into military service (nicknamed, rather incongruously, Little Willie), Britain’s secret weapon was finally revealed. For months it had been under construction in separate locations and listed in paperwork as a ‘water carrier for Mesopotamia’. This code name gave rise to the eventual name of t

John Warner and Carl Levin provide a timeless example of such an investigation in their “Review of the Circumstances Surrounding the Ranger Raid on October 3–4, 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia” (Warner and Levin 1995).

In the decade that followed the Son Tay Raid, the ember of the Army’s interest in direct-action commandos was blown into a flame by the winds of world events. Namely, these included the failure of West German police to rescue Israeli athletes from the clutches of Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and the successes of Israeli co

George Melville would serve as the Jeannette’s engineer. Said to be distantly related to the great author, Melville was an improvisational genius with machines—a greasy-fingered savant who seemed most at home among thumping boilers and sharp blasts of steam. The engineer, thirty-eight years old, had a booming voice, a stout physique, and an enormou

In January 1942, two memoranda arrived on Holcomb’s desk within a week of each other suggesting the creation of Marine Corps commandos. The first was from his superior, Admiral Ernest J. King, the recently appointed Chief of Naval Operations. As enamored with defense as he was with temperance—“When they get in trouble they send for the sons-of-bitc