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Retro Warfare

An M-2 Treadway bridge section descends under parachutes after a drop by the 314th Troop Carrier Group, Dec. 7, 1950.

How eight C-119s parachuted 2,900-pound Treadway bridge sections in December 1950 to replace a bridge destroyed at Funchilin Pass for Marines coming out of the Chosin Reservoir

Sixteen feet of missing bridge stood between the 1st Marine Division and the road south

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The B-17F Memphis Belle on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, January 2022.

The Memphis Belle was not the first U.S. heavy bomber to finish 25 missions, the Air Force museum says; it credits a B-17E named Suzy-Q, which flew in the Pacific in 1942

Twenty-five missions was the number that sent a World War II bomber crew home, and

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Wright Military Flyer biplane reproduction in a museum

The 1909 Wright Military Flyer, which the Smithsonian calls the world’s first military airplane, sold to the Army for $30,000 after beating its 40 mph speed requirement with a 42.5 mph average

Two miles per hour over the line was worth $5,000 in the summer of 1909.

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Aircraft carrier USS Langley underway in 1927

On Oct. 17, 1922, Lt. Virgil Griffin flew a VE-7 off USS Langley, the first plane launched from the converted collier that became the Navy’s first aircraft carrier

Anchored in Virginia’s York River on Oct. 17, 1922, a former Navy coal ship launched

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Painting of an 18th-century sailing brig off a hilly Caribbean island

On Oct. 13, 1775, the Continental Congress voted to fit out two sailing vessels with crews of 80, the vote the U.S. Navy marks as its birthday

Oct. 13, 2026 marks 251 years since the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, voted to

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The wooden hull of the gunboat Philadelphia with cannon in a museum gallery

The gunboat Philadelphia sank in Lake Champlain on Oct. 11, 1776, at Valcour Island, and the Smithsonian calls her the oldest American fighting vessel in existence

Two hundred fifty years separate the gunboat Philadelphia’s last fight from Oct. 11, 2026. She

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The recovered H.L. Hunley in its conservation tank in North Charleston, South Carolina, in 2017.

The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley sank the Union sloop-of-war Housatonic on Feb. 17, 1864, the first time a submarine sank a warship in combat

“It had the appearance of a plank moving in the water.” That was how the

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The Curtiss NC-4 flying boat on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.

Three Navy flying boats set out to cross the Atlantic in May 1919, and only NC-4 made it, reaching Lisbon to complete the first transatlantic flight

A U.S. Navy flying boat came down in the harbor at Lisbon, Portugal, on May

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The Douglas World Cruiser Chicago at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

How two Douglas World Cruisers flew 27,553 miles in 175 days to complete the first flight around the world in 1924

Four Army biplanes left Seattle on April 6, 1924, and two of them came back.

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The Navy P2V-1 Neptune Truculent Turtle taxiing in 1946

How a Navy P2V Neptune named Truculent Turtle flew 11,235 miles from Australia to Ohio without refueling in 1946

A stripped-down Lockheed P2V-1 Neptune lifted off from Perth, Australia, on Sept. 29, 1946, so

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