User:Navy Smart/09 18


 * 1860 - The sloop of war, USS Levant, sails from Hawaii for Panama. She is never seen again. In June 1861 a mast and a part of a lower yardarm believed to be from USS Levant are found near Hilo. Spikes had been driven into the mast as if to a form a raft. Some rumors had her running aground on an uncharted reef off California; others had her defecting to the Confederacy.
 * 1906 - A Marine battalion from USS Dixie lands at Cienfuegos, Cuba to reinforce a party guarding American owned plantations, where tensions are still high from the stalled revolution attempt from Sept. 13.
 * 1936 - Squadron 40-T, based in the Mediterranean, is established to protect U.S. interests and evacuate U.S. citizens around the Iberian Peninsula throughout the Spanish Civil War.
 * 1943 - U.S. Navy aircraft perform aerial raids on the Tarawa Makin Islands, where the aerial photography taken proves to be fruitful for the oncoming invasion of the islands.
 * 1993 - USS Gladiator (MCM 11) is commissioned at Naval Station Newport, R.I. The 11th Avenger-class mine countermeasures ship is the third U.S. ship named Gladiator. It is homeported at Manama, Bahrain.
 * 1993 - USS Vella Gulf (CG 72) is commissioned at her homeport of Naval Station Norfolk. The guided-missile cruiser is the 26th in the Ticonderoga-class and the second Navy ship to be named after the famed Battle of Vella Gulf from the Solomons campaign of World War II.
 * 2004 - USS Chung Hoon (DDG 93) is commissioned. USS Chung Hoon is named in honor of Rear Adm. Gordon Pai'ea Chung-Hoon, first Asian-American Naval Academy graduate and first Asian-American flag officer. During World War II, he was in command of USS Sigsbee (DD 502) when a kamikaze crashed into her in Apr. 1945.
 * 2008 - USNS Carl Brashear (T-AKE 7) is christened and launched at San Diego, Calif. The dry cargo ship provides ammunition, food, repair, parts, stores and small quantities of fuel for the U.S. Marine Corps. The ship is named for Master Chief Carl Brashear, the first African American Master Diver in the U.S. Navy and the first amputee to be recertified as a diver after amputation.

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