1 October
1800 – U.S. schooner Experiment captures French schooner Diana.
1844 – The Naval Observatory, headed by Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury, occupies its first permanent quarters.
1874 – Supply Corps purser Lt. J.Q. Barton is given leave to enter service of new Japanese Navy to organize a pay department and instruct Japanese about accounts. He served until Oct. 1, 1877, when he again became a purser in the U.S. Navy.
1880 – John Phillip Sousa becomes leader of Marine Corps Band.
1928 – The first class at school for enlisted Navy and Marine Corps radio intercept operators (The “On the Roof Gang”) is held.
1937 – Patrol aviation is transferred to Aircraft Scouting Force, a re-established type command. With the change, five patrol wings were established as a separate administrative command over their squadrons.
1946 – Truculent Turtle lands at Columbus, Ohio, breaking the world’s record for distance without refueling during flight of 11,235 miles.
1949 – Military Sea Transportation Service is activated.
1955 – USS Forrestal (CVA 59), the first of post-war super carriers, is commissioned.
1979 – President Jimmy Carter awards the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to Neil Armstrong, retired Navy Capt. Charles Conrad Jr., retired Marine Col. John Glenn and retired Rear Adm. Alan Shepard Jr.
1980 – USS Cochrane (DDG 21) rescues 104 Vietnamese refugees 620 miles east of Saigon.
1990 – USS Independence (CV 62) enters Persian Gulf (first carrier in Persian Gulf since 1974).
2 October
1799 – Washington Navy Yard is established
1842 – The sloop, Concord, wrecks with the loss of three lives in the Mozambique Channel.
1939 – Foreign ministers of Western Hemisphere countries agree to establish a neutrality zone around the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North and South America to be enforced by the U.S. Navy. The zone is established at a Congress of American States meeting in Panama.
3 October
1921 – USS Olympia sails for France to bring home the Unknown Soldier from World War I.
1955 – USS Saipan (CVL 48) begins disaster relief in Tampico, Mexico, rescuing people and delivering supplies. Operations end Oct. 10.
1962 – Sigma 7 (Mercury 8), piloted by Navy Cmdr. Walter M. Schirra Jr., is launched. In a mission lasting nine hours and 13 minutes, he made six orbits at an altitude up to 175.8 statute miles at 17,558 mph. USS Kearsarge (CVS 33) makes the recovery.
4 October
1821 – Lt. Robert F. Stockton sails from Boston for Africa to carry out orders to help stop the international slave trade.
1944 – Aircraft from USS Ranger (CV 4) sink five German ships and damage three others in Operation Leader, the only U.S. Navy carrier operation in northern European waters during World War II.
1952 – Task Force 77 aircraft encounter MIG-15 aircraft for the first time.
1976 – USS Jonas Ingram (DD 938) rescues seven survivors of a Finnish motor craft that sank in the Baltic Sea.
1991 – USS Arkansas (CGN 41), USNS Sioux (T-ATF 171), USS Aubrey Fitch (FFG 34) and Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron (HS) 6 rescue personnel on merchant ships in three different rescue operations in the Arabian Sea.
1998 – U.S. and Algierian navies conduct the first bilateral exercise since Algeria gained independendence from France in 1962. It was a search and rescue operation involving USS Mitscher (DDG 57).
5 October
1863 – Confederate steamer David seriously damages USS New Ironsides with a spar torpedo off Charleston, S.C.
1913 – OWL (Over Water Land Type), the Navy’s first amphibian flying boat, is tested at Hammondsport, N.Y.
1957 – Minitrack, a satellite tracking net developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, becomes operational. This network, with stations from Maine to Chile, tracked the Vangard satellite.
6 October
1884 – The Department of the Navy establishes the Naval War College at Newport, R.I.
1940 – The fourth group of eight U.S. destroyers involved in the Destroyers for Bases Deal are turned over to British authorities in Halifax, Canada.
1943 – In the Battle of Vella Lavella, three U.S. destroyers attack nine Japanese destroyers to stop evacuation of Japanese troops from Vella Lavella, Solomon Islands.
1958 – USS Seawolf (SSN 575) completes a record submerged run of 60 days, logging more than 13,700 nautical miles.
1962 – USS Bainbridge (DLGN 25), the Navy’s first nuclear-powered destroyer, is commissioned.
1997 – NASA Astronaut Cmdr. Wendy B. Lawrence returns from mission with STS-86, when Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with Mir Space Station. The mission began Sept. 25.
7 October
1864 – USS Washusett captures Confederate raider CSS Florida in harbor of Bahia, Brazil.
1924 – Rigid airship Shenandoah commences transcontinental flight.
1975 – President Gerald Ford signs law allowing admission of women into service academies.
8 October
1812 – A boat party under Lt. Jesse D. Elliott captures HMS Detroit and Caledonia in the Niagara River.
1842 – Commodore Lawrence Kearny of USS Constitution addresses a letter to the Viceroy of China, urging that American merchants in China be granted the same treaty privileges as the British. His negotiations are successful.
1950 – The 1st Marine Division commences embarkation at Inchon for landings in Wonsan, Korea.
1961 – USS Tulare (AKA 112) and USS Princeton (CVS 7) rescue seamen from an American and a Lebanese merchant ship, which were aground on Kita Daita Jima.
9 October
1873 – Lt. Charles Belknap calls a meeting at the Naval Academy to establish the U.S. Naval Institute for the purpose of disseminating scientific and professional knowledge throughout the Navy.
1942 – The first three schools for enlisted WAVES open in Stillwater, Okla. (yeoman); Bloomington, Ind. (storekeepers); and Madison, Wis. (radiomen).
1945 – A parade in New York City honors Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz and 13 other Medal of Honor recipients.
1961 – USS Princeton (LPH 5) rescues 74 survivors of two shipwrecks (U.S. lines Pioneer Muse and SS Shiek) from the island of Kita Daito Shima.
10 October
1845 – The Naval School, later the Naval Academy, opens in Annapolis, Md., with 50 midshipmen and seven faculty.
1923 – First American-built rigid airship, Shenandoah, is christened. It used helium gas instead of hydrogen.
1944 – The Leyte campaign begins with the attack of four carrier task groups of Task Force 38 on Okinawa and Ryukyus.
1960 – Navy assigned responsibility for program management and technial direction of Project SPASUR, the first U.S. universal satellite detection and tracking network.
1985 – Fighters from USS Saratoga (CV 60) force an Egyptian airliner, with the hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro aboard, to Italy, where the hijackers were taken into custody.
11 October
1776 – Revolutionaries fight the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain, N.Y. Although defeated, the American flotilla delayed the British advance and caused it to fall back into winter quarters.
1824 – Marquis de Lafayette visits the Washington Navy Yard during his yearlong tour of America. He returned to the yard October 12, to continue his visit.
1942 – Battle of Cape Esperance begins. In the two-day battle, an American task force stops a Japanese attack on Guadalcanal and sinking two Japanese ships in the process, while losing USS Duncan (DD 485).
1945 – Typhoon hits Okinawa, Japan, damaging many Navy ships.
1950 – Task Force 77 aircraft destroy North Korean vessels off Songjin, Wonsan and north of Hungham.
1963 – Navy medical team from Norfolk, Va., begins massive inoculation program to safeguard against outbreak of typhoid in the wake of Hurricane Flora.
1967 – Operation Coronado VI began in Rung Sat Zone.
1968 – Apollo 7, the first U.S. three-man space mission is launched, commanded by Cmdr. Walter Schirra Jr. The mission lasted 10 days, 20 hours. Recovery was by USS Essex (CVS 9).
12 October
1914 – USS Jupiter (AC 3) is first Navy ship to complete transit of the Panama Canal.
1944 – Aircraft from Carrier Task Force 38 attack Formosa.
1957 – Rear Adm. G.J. Dufek arrives at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, to command Operation Deep Freeze III during the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58.
1961 – A five-man cholera treatment demonstration team from Naval Medical Research Unit, Taipei, leaves to assist setting up of facilities to treat an epidemic in Manila.
1965 – Project Sealab II, a project where teams of naval divers and scientists spent 15 days in Sealab, moored 205 feet below surface near La Jolla, Calif, comes to an end.
1965 – First group of men commissioned into the Navy Nurse Corps reports for a one-month indoctrination to naval service.
1980 – USS Guadalcanal (LPH 7) and other ships of Amphibious Forces 6th Fleet begin assisting earthquake victims in Al Asnam, Algeria.
13 October
1775 – The Continental Congress establishes a Continental Navy, later known as the U.S. Navy.
1943 – The Destroyer Bristol (DD 453) is sunk, with the loss of 52 lives, by the U-317 off the coast of Algeria.
1954 – USS Saipan (CVL 48) begins relief and humanitarian aid operations for Haitians who were victims of Hurricane Hazel. The operation ended Oct. 19.
14 October
1918 – Naval aviators of Marine Day Squadron 9 make the first raid-in-force for the Northern Bombing Group in World War I, when they bombed a German railroad at Thielt Rivy, Belgium.
1920 – The obsolete battleship Indiana (BB 1) is sunk in Tangier Sound, in the Chesapeake Bay.
1962 – A U.S. reconnaissance plane photographs a Soviet nuclear missile site under construction at San Cristobal, 100 miles west of Havana.
15 October
1917 – USS Cassin (DD 43) is torpedoed by German submarine U-61 off the coast of Ireland. In trying to save the ship, Gunner’s Mate Osmond Kelly Ingram becomes first American Sailor killed in World War I and later is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism. He becomes the first enlisted man to have a ship named for him, in 1919.
1948 – First women officers on active duty are sworn in as commissioned officers in regular Navy under Women’s Service Integration Act of June 1948 by Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan: Capt. Joy B. Hancock; Lt. Cmdr. Winifred R. Quick; Lt. Cmdr. Anne King; Lt. Cmdr. Frances L. Willoughby; Lt. Ellen Ford; Lt. Doris Cranmore; Lt. j.g. Doris A. Defenderfer; and Lt. j.g. Betty Rae Tennant.
1957 – USS Lake Champlain (CV 39) reaches Valencia, Spain, to assist in flood rescue work.
1960 – USS Patrick Henry (SSBN 599) begins successful firing of four Polaris test vehicles under operational rather than test conditions. Tests are completed Oct. 18.
1965 – U.S. Naval Support Activity Danang Vietnam established.
16 October
1885 – Navy Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan becomes superintendent of the Naval War College.
1891 – A brawl between American Sailors and Chilean nationals outside the True Blue Saloon in Valparaiso, Chile, resulted in two American Sailors killed, 17 wounded (five seriously) and many arrested. The incident sparked a diplomatic crisis that lasted for months, occasionally threatening war between the two countries, until a settlement was reached.
1940 – Fifth group of 10 destroyers from the Destroyers for Bases Deal are turned over to the British in Halifax, Canada.
1942 – Carrier aircraft from USS Hornet (CV 8) conduct attacks on Japanese troops on Guadalcanal.
1943 – The Navy accepts its first helicopter, a Sikorsky YR-4B (HNS-1), at Bridgeport, Conn.
17 October
1922 – Lt. Cmdr. Virgil C. Griffin, in a Vought VE-7SF makes first the takeoff from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, USS Langley (CV 1) anchored in York River, Va.
1941 – German U-boat U-568 torpedoes and damages USS Kearny (DD 432) near Iceland, resulting in 11 killed and 22 injured.
1944 – Naval Forces land Army Rangers on islands at the entrance to Leyte Gulf in preparation for landings.
1989 – Following the San Francisco earthquake, 24 Navy and Military Sealift Command ships render assistance.
18 October
1812 – U.S. sloop of war Wasp captures HM brig Frolic.
1859 – U.S. Marines reach Harper’s Ferry, Va., and assault the arsenal seized by John Brown and his followers.
1867 – USS Ossipee and USS Resaca participate in the formal transfer of Alaska to U.S. authority at Sitka and remain to enforce law and order in new territory.
1944 – 3rd Fleet carrier aircraft attack Japanese ships in harbor and land forces around Manila.
1968 – In Operation Sea Lords, the Navy’s three major operating forces in Vietnam (Task Forces 115, 116 and 117) are brought together for the first time to stop Vietcong infiltration deep into South Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.
19 October
1843 – Capt. Robert Stockton on Princeton, the first screw-propelled naval steamer, challenges British merchant ship Great Western to a race off New York, which Princeton won easily.
1915 – Submarine Base at New London, Conn is established.
1944 – Secretary of the Navy orders African-American women accepted into the Naval Reserve.
1987 – Iranian oil-drilling platform used for military purposes is destroyed.
20 October
1824 – U.S. schooner Porpoise captures four pirate ships off Cuba
1944 – 7th Fleet lands more than 60,000 Army troops on Leyte, Philippines, while Japanese aircraft attack.
1952 – Task Force 77 establishes Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) Hunter/Killer Teams of two ECM-equipped aircraft and an armed escort of four Skyraiders and four Corsairs.
1967 – Operation Coronado VII began in Mekong Delta, Vietnam.
1983 – Due to political strife, USS Independence (CV 62) is ordered to Grenada.
21 October
1797 – USS Constitution is launched at the Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston, Mass. The ship is now the oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy.
1842 – Commodore Thomas Catesby Jones, commander, Pacific Command mistakenly seizes Monterey, thinking the United States has gone to war with Mexico.
1942 – A British submarine lands Capt. Jerauld Wright and four Army officers at Cherchel, French North Africa, to meet with a French military delegation to learn the French attitude toward future Allied landings.
22 October
1846 – Lavinia Fanning Watson of Philadelphia christens the sloop-of-war Germantown, the first U.S. Navy ship sponsored by a woman.
1951 – First of seven detonations, Operation Buster-Jangle nuclear test.
1962 – President John F. Kennedy orders a surface blockade (quarantine) of Cuba to prevent Soviet offensive weapons from reaching Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
23 October
1944 – The Battle of Leyte Gulf, a series of separate battles, begins with attacks on Japanese ships.
1983 – Terrorist bombing of Marine barracks at Beirut airport in Lebanon.
1983 – Operation Urgent Fury begins in Grenada, West Indies.
24 October
1944 – In an air-sea battle in the Sibuyan Sea, carrier aircraft attack Japanese Center Force.
1958 – USS Kleinsmith (APD 134) evacuates U.S. nationals from Nicaro, Cuba.
1962 – Atlantic Fleet begins quarantine operations to force Soviet Union to agree to remove ballistic missiles and long range bombers from Cuba.
25 October
1812 – USS United States (Capt. Stephen Decatur) captures HMS Macedonian.
1924 – Airship USS Shenandoah (ZR 1) completes round-trip transcontinental cruise that began Oct. 7.
1944 – During Battle of Leyte Gulf in Battle of Surigao Straits, U.S. battleships execute the maneuver of “crossing the tee” of the Japanese forces. In Battle Off Samar, escort carriers, destroyers and destroyer escorts heroically resist attacks of Japanese Center Force. In Battle Off Cape Engano, 3rd Fleet carriers attack Japanese Northern Force, sinking several small carriers.
1950 – Chinese Communist Forces launch first offensive in Korea.
1966 – Operation Sea Dragon logistics interdiction began
1983 – U.S. Marine and Army troops land on Grenada to evacuate U.S. citizens threatened by the island’s unstable political situation.
26 October
1921 – In first successful test, a compressed-air, turntable catapult, launches a N-9 seaplane.
1922 – Lt. Cmdr. Godfrey de Chevalier makes fhe first landing aboard a carrier, USS Langley (CV 1), while underway off Cape Henry, Va.
1942 – USS Hornet (CV 8) was lost and USS Enterprise (CV 6) was badly damaged during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Island.
1944 – Battle of Leyte Gulf ends with Navy carrier and U.S. Army Air Forces aircraft attacks on the retreating Japanese ships. U.S. forces sink many Japanese ships, including four carriers, three battleships, 10 cruisers and nine destroyers, for a total of 26 capital ships.
1944 – Special Task Air Group 1 makes last attack in month-long demonstration of TDR drone missile against Japanese shipping and islands in the Pacific. Of 46 missiles fired, 29 reached their target areas.
1950 – U.S. Amphibious Force 7th Fleet lands 1st Marine Division at Wonsan, Korea.
1963 – USS Andrew Jackson (SSBN 619) launches first Polaris A-3 missile from a submerged submarine, off Cape Canaveral, Fla.
27 October
1864 – Lt. William Cushing sinks Confederate ram Albemarle with a spar torpedo attached to the bow of his launch.
1922 – Navy League of the United States sponsors first annual celebration of Navy Day to focus public attention on the importance of the U.S. Navy. That date was selected because it was Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday.
1943 – First women Marines report for duty on the West Coast, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
1944 – Fast Carrier Task Forces attack Japanese shipping and installations in Visayas and northern Luzon.
1967 – Operation Coronado VIII begins in Rung Sat Zone.
28 October
1864 – Steamer General Thomas and gunboat Stone River destroy Confederate batteries on Tennessee River near Decatur, Ala.
1882 – Orders issued for first naval attache (Lt. Cmdr. French Chadwick sent to London).
1933 – The development of the PBY Catalina flying boat is begun by awarding the contract to the Consolidated Aircraft Company.
29 October
1814 – Launching of Fulton I, first American steam powered warship, at New York City. The ship was designed by Robert Fulton.
1955 – Ships of the 6th Fleet join U.S. military aircraft in evacuating American citizens from Egypt, Israel and Syria when war breaks out in the Middle East.
1980 – USS Parsons (DDG 33) rescues 110 Vietnamese refugees 330 miles south of Saigon.
1989 – A pilot making his 1st carrier landing and four others are killed when his plane crashes on the flight deck of of the training carrier Lexington (AVT 16) off the coast of Pensacola, Fla.
30 October
1775 – Congress authorizes four vessels for the defense of the United Colonies.
1799 – William Balch becomes the Navy’s first commissioned chaplain.
1990 – Two Sailors are killed when a steam line ruptures in the boiler room of USS Iwo Jima (LPH 2) in the Persian Gulf.
31 October
1941 – German submarine U-552 sinks USS Reuben James (DD 245), which was escorting Convoy HX 156, with a loss of 115 lives — First U.S. ship lost to enemy action in World War II.
1943 – Lt. Hugh D. O’Neill of VF(N)-75 destroys a Japanese aircraft during night attack off Vella Lavella in first kill by a radar-equipped night fighter of the Pacific Fleet.
1956 – Navy men land in R4D Skytrain on the ice at the South Pole. Rear Adm. George Dufek, Capt. Douglas Cordiner, Capt. William Hawkes, Lt. Cmdr. Conrad Shinn, Lt. John Swadener, Aviation Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class J. P. Strider and Aviation Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class William Cumbie are the first men to stand on the South Pole since Capt. Robert F. Scott in 1912.
1956 – USS Burdo (APD 133) and USS Harlan R. Dickson (DD 708) evacuate 166 persons from Haifa, Israel, due to the fighting between Egypt and Israel.
1961 – End of Lighter than Air in U.S. Navy with disestablishment of Fleet Airship Wing 1 and ZP-1 and ZP-3, the last operating units in LTA branch of naval aviation, at Lakehurst, N.J.