US Naval History Podcast

This episode starts Season 2 of the United States Naval History podcast, covering the Cold War, an era of small wars and big bombs looming over a geopolitical tinderbox balanced between east and west, between totalitarian communism and more or less liberal, more or less democracy. 

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This episode finishes the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation...

This episode tells the story of the the Vietnam War at sea, of the most intense air battles of the Cold War, of bombardments against the Vietnamese coastline, and the politics  and history behind a war that was unpopular from day one and split the nation in two. 

Right after the end of World War Two, the Viet Minh, a communist-led anti imperialist party and army led by Ho Chi Minh claimed control of almost all of the country in the power vacuum immediately after the Japanese surrender...

This episode tells the story of the the Vietnam War brownwater operations, the fighting in the marshes, rivers, the deltas, and creeks of North and South Vietnam. This is also the story of the birth and formative operations of Navy SEAL teams in Vietnam, from daring POW rescue operations, to hostage snatch-and-grab operations taken beneath covering naval gunfire from destroyers offshore. 

This is that story...

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This episode tells the story of the the post-Vietnam Navy, an era where we were outgunned and outnumbered by the newly resurgent Soviet Navy. During the Soviet naval building boom between 1966 and 1970, when the US was unable to match it due to the resource drain of the Vietnam War, the Soviets commissioned 209 ships to the US Navy’s 88. The WWII era of ships which had sustained the US fleet since the end of the last world war were at the end of their useful life and were not being replaced...

On September 29, 2006, Michael Monsoor and three SEAL snipers watched vigilantly for enemy activity from their rooftop post in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. When a grenade thrown from insurgents bounced off Michael's chest, he could have escaped. Instead, he threw himself onto the live grenade, shielding his fellow soldiers from the immediate  explosion. Michael died thirty minutes later, having made the ultimate  sacrifice...