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In early November, retired Senior Chief Jeffrey Sparenberg was the guest of honor at military heritage day in Delaware. Sparenberg spent 23 years in the Navy, including time on the destroyer Cole, and he was at Fort DuPont State Park that day to donate a flag that he said flew over the Cole shortly after it was attacked nine years ago. The flag, he hoped, would be put on view at the planned Delaware Military Museum. A photograph from the ceremony shows Sparenberg on the steps of a shuttered brick building. The left side of his chest is covered with...

The commanding officer and top enlisted sailor serving on the Norfolk-based destroyer James E. Williams were relieved of command today after numerous cases of fraternization among the crew and allegations of sexual assault. Cmdr. Paul Marquis, skipper of the Williams, was assigned to administrative duty by Capt. Robert C. Barwis, the commander of Destroyer Squadron 26, according to a Navy spokesman. Master Chief Timothy Youell, who served as the command master chief on the Williams, also has been reassigned to an administrative job. The actions come in the wake of nine fraternization cases between senior and junior enlisted personnel on...

The storm mucking up Southcentral Alaska this week battered a far-flung U.S. Coast Guard outpost in the Aleutians over the weekend with hurricane-force winds, according to the National Weather Service. Out in Attu, the crew of the Coast Guard's Long-Range Navigation Station reported sustained winds of 125 mph with gusts hitting 178 mph over the weekend. The station also got more than a foot and a half of snow. The gusts, equivalent to the winds of a Category 5 hurricane, damaged a communications antenna, which broke free from three securing mounts, the Coast Guard said. The station's crew has been...

NOTE - Partial schedule is now available. This is what I was able to piece together off the information just added to Cartoon Network website schedule today. This gives you a rough idea what cartoons will air during each hour. It is unlikely they will air in this exact order. This schedule is also likely incomplete. 1:00pm: Odor-Able Kitty Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century Gee Whiz-z-z Beep, Beep Crowing Pains Tom Turk and Daffy 2:00pm: Stage Door Cartoon Great Piggy Bank Robbery Hare Tonic Going! Going! Gosh! Porky Pig's Feat Bad Ol' Putty Tat 3:00pm: Sandy Claws Bugs...

A senior Coast Guard official removed earlier this year from his command position in Alaska is facing a long string of charges within the agency, including sodomy, indecent acts and conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman. The U.S. Coast Guard filed 31 violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice against Capt. Herbert Hamilton. It did not provide details of the alleged offenses, which also include fraud, adultery, indecent language and soliciting another to commit an offense.

A Japanese navy destroyer and a South Korean container ship collided Tuesday off southern Japan, sparking fires on both ships and injuring three crew members, officials said. The ships collided under a bridge linking the Japanese main islands of Kyushu and Honshu in the narrow Kanmon Strait, Japan Coast Guard spokesman Seishi Izumi said. One crew member on the destroyer JS Kurama was slightly injured with scratches and bruises while two others were suffering from smoke inhalation, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing policy. None of the South Korean ship's 16 crew members — 12 from...

When Alison Kendall’s boss told her in 2007 that her civil service job was being transferred to a different building in another part of Vancouver, she panicked. Commuting to a new office would be no big deal for most people, she knew. But Kendall might well have the worst sense of direction in the world. For as long as she can remember, she has been unable to perform even the simplest navigational tasks. She needed a family member to escort her to and from school right through the end of grade twelve, and is still able to produce only a...

NORFOLK Don Dencker was a 19-year-old draftee on Oct. 20, 1944, when he became part of one of the most storied military operations of World War II. A soldier in the 96th Infantry Division, Dencker was hauled ashore at 10 a.m. by an amphibious vehicle on Leyte, an island in the Philippines, after occupying Japanese troops there had undergone relentless bombardment from an armada of Allied ships offshore. Scrambling across the beach toward the hills beyond, his outfit wiped out the remaining Japanese resistance within three hours. Around 2 p.m., on a beach 30 miles away, Dencker's boss made a...

PHILADELPHIA -- Dan McSweeney has a few ideas for saving the United States. That would be the SS United States -- the fastest ocean liner in the world. Bigger than the Titanic and fast enough to water-ski behind, she's a steamship so sophisticated, her capabilities remained a Cold War secret for decades. She transported royalty and starlets. Her crew served frog legs in first class. Before the dawn of the jet age, the SS United States was the Concorde of her era. 'Big U' in Big Trouble? Admirers call her the "Big U." Today, she could be in big trouble....

It’s time to return some sanity to the way ships are named.  Why?  Because the silliness is upon us once again:111th CONGRESS 1st Session H. CON. RES. 83Expressing the sense of Congress that a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of the Navy, either the aircraft carrier designated as CVN-79 or the aircraft carrier designated as CVN-80, should be named the U.S.S. Barry M. Goldwater.Bill information and status here  The nonsense began with CVN-70  and reached the height of historical blindness with the Truman (honestly, naming a carrier for a president who tried his hardest to kill naval aviation and oversaw the death...

Firefox's ad-removal tool is its most popular add-on. Now its creator wants to let you use it ethically. First, a confession: I read the Web without ads. For years now, I've been using Adblock Plus, a plug-in for Firefox that eliminates nearly every ad I encounter online. I understand the irony here; Slate and other publications I've written for make money from advertisements, so my blocking them is akin to an airline pilot siphoning fuel from his tank before he takes off. And now, by discussing the appeal of ad-blocking software in this column, you could say I'm making matters...

OTSU — A curator at a museum in Shiga Prefecture in western Japan accidentally dropped and broke an antique glass accessory estimated to be 2,200 years old, the museum said Friday. The item, designated by the government as an important cultural asset and believed to date back to the mid-Yayoi period, was unearthed in 1989 at the Yoshinogari Remains in Saga Prefecture, southwestern Japan. It was on loan for a special display scheduled to begin Saturday at the Shiga Prefectural Azuchi Castle Archaeological Museum. ‘‘It’s a great pity,’’ said Toshihiro Kawasaki, head of the Saga prefectural board of education in...

Today I have received probably 15 spam messages using multiple variations of "failed mail delivery" as the sender and/or subject. No idea what they want because I didn't open them.

Analysts say the value of the Internet means providers can sell bandwidth much like utility companies sell electricity or municipalities sell water. Time Warner Cable's expansion of its bandwidth cap testing marks the evolution of the Internet to a utility, like water and energy, where people pay for what they use. People who have used the Internet for years have grown accustomed to paying one monthly price for unlimited access. However, that model is no longer sustainable as the increasing number of devices and people place higher demands on bandwidth, a finite commodity. Without controls, Internet users could experience "brownouts"...

BREMERTON — The USS San Francisco wrapped up its 3 1/2-year stay in Puget Sound on Tuesday morning. The Los Angeles-class submarine, which arrived at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in September 2005 after sustaining damage in a crash with an undersea mountain, ferried out of Puget Sound waters with a tug escort for the last time. The crew of roughly 140 is taking the vessel, with its transplanted bow, to its new homeport in San Diego. The vessel was formerly homeported in Guam. The submarine stalled not far from the Bremerton ferry terminal on its way out of Sinclair Inlet...

Both the amphibious assault ship USS Essex and the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis held burial-at-sea ceremonies over the past week. The Essex held a ceremony Sunday and the carrier crew buried six retired chief petty officers on April 1. The solemn memorials are a tradition that predates the U.S. Navy and reaches back to man’s earliest sea voyages, according to the Naval Historical Center. The Navy holds the ceremonies under strict, detailed guidelines. Up until World War II, the practice arose out of necessity as ships often embarked for long periods. But since then, many servicemembers, veterans and...

The collision earlier this month between two U.S. Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz left a surface ship with a gaping hole in its fuel tank and caused a submarine to roll about 85 degrees, U.S. Navy officials said Monday. The March 20 collision between the amphibious assault ship USS New Orleans and the fast-attack nuclear submarine USS Hartford slightly injured about 15 sailors aboard the sub, and spilled oil from the ship into the strait. The Navy has launched two formal investigations to determine why the vessels collided and who might be at fault for the collision. The...

The Vella Gulf, a Norfolk-based ship that until recently led America's offensive on piracy off the Horn of Africa, traces its name to a World War II battle in which the Navy pursued tactics a pirate would admire. Labeled "a little classic of naval warfare " by famed Adm. Chester Nimitz, the Battle of Vella Gulf was fought and won in about an hour on the night of Aug. 6-7, 1943. The engagement was a pivotal moment in the long and bloody campaign to dislodge the Japanese from the Solomons, a chain of islands northeast of Australia. The fight's American...

What would it have been like to be brought up by George Orwell? Pretty grim, you might think. But you would be wrong. In June 1944, Orwell and his wife Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy whom they named Richard Horatio Blair (Eric Blair being Orwell's real name). Now a retired engineer living happily in an immaculate house in a picture-book Warwickshire village, Blair has never publicised the fact that he was related to Orwell, always preferring to remain in the background. But ahead of a talk at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival with Orwell's biographer DJ Taylor (details, below...

The date - 19 March 1945. Area of operations - fifty miles off the coast of Japan. Flight ops have been underway since before dawn, beginning with a strike against Honshu and another against shipping in Kobe harbor. On the flight deck, aircraft of CVG-5 are being turned around, serviced and armed for another launch and strike; in the ready rooms, the crews are briefing…