Free Republic

As the sun went down after the 1862 Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War, some soldiers noticed that their wounds were glowing a faint blue. Many men waited on the rainy, muddy Tennessee battlefield for two days that April, until medics could treat them. Once they were taken to field hospitals, the troops with glowing wounds were more likely to survive their injuries — and to get better faster. Thus the mysterious blue light was dubbed “Angel’s Glow.” In 2001, 17-year-old Civil War buff Bill Martin visited the Shiloh battlefield with his family and heard the legend of Angel’s...

The Eagle was built by the Nazis and fought for Hitler in World War Two - so how did a tall ship that once flew the swastika end up as a training vessel for new US Coast Guard cadets? Driving home along the coast of Connecticut one winter's evening, Tido Holtkamp saw a ghost. There she was - moored in the harbour, her three towering masts, draped with those familiar sails he had rigged back in the German Navy in World War Two. Her body had been repainted in the red, white and blue of the US, but her curves...

The controversy surrounding the F-35 is fundamentally an extension of the debate over what a future fighter should be. Recently the aircraft made news when it was officially announced that the airframe couldn’t dogfight worth a damn. The standard riposte is that dogfighting as a form of aerial combat, stopped being relevant a long time ago. Perhaps the best advocate for dogfighting-is-dead point of view isn’t a paper for the F-35 but a paper which argues that air combat is fundamentally changing. Perhaps the F-35 is not the best tool for coming era, but neither is the super-dogfighter many in...

MEXICO CITY – A complaint lodged with the Pentagon has prompted the U.S. Navy to look into the possible presence of anything that may cause cancer in a section of the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a military spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Marines at Camp Pendleton served their community in a different way Saturday by granting the Make-A-Wish of a Poway teenager battling cancer. James Gallant, who is on the verge of turning 16, was just diagnosed with brain cancer. His wish? To be a Marine for the day. “James has loved the military since he was two years old and always wanted to be a part of it,” James’ mother, Sarah Silverstein, told Marines at Camp Pendleton. During his two years of junior ROTC in high school, James became especially interested in Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD). So to make his wish...

Marine Corps leaders have made the long-awaited proposal to adopt the M4 carbine as the standard Marine infantry rifle. The recommendation wouldn’t completely phase out the currently-standard M16, but it would push the archetypal rifle into a support role. This follows in the Army’s footsteps, which began the transition to M4s more than 20 years ago. The M4 is in use with the Marines for select roles and is issued to officers as well.

Here is a moving tribute to the veterans of the USS Arizona that I didn't know about.

The military and a private organization have brought home the remains of 36 Marines killed in one of World War II's bloodiest battles. A group called History Flight recovered the remains from the remote Pacific atoll of Tarawa, the U.S. Marine Corps said. A ceremony was held Sunday in Pearl Harbor to mark their return.

Benjamin Bederson turned past the page in the diary from long ago, the page he had burned a hole through, and mentioned things he had done since that summer of 1945. “Was an experimental atomic physicist,” he said. “Worked as a professor at New York University, taught almost every course in physics, was editor in chief of the American Physical Society and helped usher physics journals into the electronic age.” He left out the part about helping to usher in the atomic age — the part about testing the ignition switches for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki...

The safety of pilots, crew members and passengers has been put at risk repeatedly by people shining laser beams into the cockpit. I don't know very much at all about aviation, probably less than the average person. I do know that I have always been impressed by the Blue Angels as they fly in formation during their annual visit to San Francisco. Considering how well known, and documented this hazard is, and how vulnerable the pilots are, I'm surprised there has been no resolution to the problem. We may as well face it, there will always be goofballs, anarchists, and...

Here’s what warfare may be like in 2025 DAVID NYE JULY 23, 2015 With the technology of war rapidly changing, military leaders will have to rewrite the books on tactics and strategy. Here’s WATM’s take on what an infantry assault will look like in 2025, considering that by then we’ll have cyborg insects, powered body armor, and steerable sniper rounds. The mission TALOS Iron man suit A rifle platoon is tasked with assaulting a compound consisting of four buildings using only their own manpower plus a sniper team. They will be wearing TALOS armor, an “Iron Man”-like suit which covers...

During a July 23 interview on the Lars Larson Show, Senator Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) said that in June he “submitted an amendment” to the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) “to give military base commanders the authority to allow service members to carry personal firearms.” That was weeks before the heinous attack on Chattanooga, but he says the amendment went nowhere because Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “didn’t want the amendment as part of the bill and wouldn’t accept it.” On July 21–just 5 days after the heinous attack in Chattanooga–Senator Heller re-introduced his amendment...

We have all been watching the story unfold about Hillary Clinton and her e-mails. She refused to use the communications systems provided for her by the American taxpayers. Those systems are "secure", meaning that no unauthorized person can read or hear the communications. Hillary Clinton chose to not use the taxpayer provided secure system. This meant that the government agencies designed to provide secure communications and prevent the enemy from knowing our most important secrets, were intentionally bypassed by our Secretary of State. If you want to know how important communications security is, look at World War II. We knew...

ROCK HILL After five combat tours, including Iraq and Afghanistan, Marine Corps veteran Gary Pittman of Rock Hill believes he has earned the right to honor the nation he fought for by raising and lowering the American flag every day. He wants to fly the stars and stripes prominently – from a flagpole in his front yard. He also wants to fly the Marine Corps flag underneath the American flag on the same flagpole. Pittman has applied for a permit from the Norwood Ridge Homeowners Association, but he has not yet been given an answer. Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andrew-dys/article28406581.html#storylink=cpy

The report, Visualizing the Tactical Ground Battlefield in the Year 2050, was the result of a workshop held with leaders from the US Defence Department, Army Research Lab, Institute for Defence Analysis and a select number of academia. In the world envisioned, armed drones will patrol the skies searching for enemy targets to eliminate. The use of drones in the current military landscape dictates it is always a human that decides to pull the trigger, but the report suggests soldiers may only have limited control over the smart-robots of the future. “The difference being that in the former, human decisions...

Friday, the Navajo Nation laid to rest another Navajo Code Talker from World War II. Kee Etsicitty died on Tuesday at the age of 93. "We are here to pay our respects to our Code Talker and take him to his final resting place," said Chris West. West was with a group of motorcyclists who accompanied the funeral procession. Hundreds gathered to pay their last respects to one of the few remaining Code Talkers. Etsicitty was honored at the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Gallup. "Yeah, I am very proud of him. I love him as a father first, and my...

The Navy's honoree was Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Sara Freeman, assigned to the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69). "HM3 Freeman has a little over five years in the Navy," said Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Integration of Capabilities and Recourses, Vice Adm. Joseph Malloy. "In this time she has done almost as much as the average senior chief. Her efforts as command pregnancy coordinator pushed women's health readiness to 89 percent. She also administered 1,556 health assessments, nearly 4,000 immunizations, qualified 12 CPR instructors and 54 basic life support students, helping Ike net a 99 percent...

Sandusky veteran spent more than two years as prisoner of Chinese Many Americans took offense when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump derided U.S. Sen. John McCain's war record — which included more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison. But for former Korean War prisoner of war John Koopman, 82, the disdain was personal. "I think Donald Trump ought to be a prisoner of war for one day, and then say to McCain what he had said," said Koopman, 82, a patient at Stein Hospice on the south campus of Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky. Trump, while speaking...