It was never built, but it was drawn…in bits and pieces. Like many devices, inventions, and weapons of war, Leonardo Da Vinci dreamed it, sketched it, and left it for history to figure out. For a submarine, there are two hints within his codex…in the Atlanticus and Paris manuscripts… Leonardo DaVinci knew fu…

See Part 1: San Pedro’s War The end of the war was near. Nazis were falling in droves to Allied tanks and planes, and the Empire of the Rising Sun was on the verge of experiencing two man-made suns of their very own. Lucia Hughes was six years old and living in wartime San Pedro, California. From what she re…

There once was an old woman, who lived in Ohio… When the Great Depression struck, she was already ancient. Confined most days to the rocking chair of elderly bliss, afternoons would see her on the porch, growling at roving bands of playful children who happened to cross the “deadline” of her front lawn. Spre…

Sometimes you see small things that don’t seem to register with you as a child. They are cool, but you really don’t see the significance, until you look back from an adult perspective… Jon Erik Hexum was born in 1957 to a Norwegian father and a mother of Norwegian descent from Minnesota. He lived in a broken…

San Pedro, California, shortly after WWII The Homefront was hard and the United States was still in the throes of the Depression that dogged Americans since the Market crash of 1929. Entry into war ended many things, rampant unemployment the most prominent, but WWII brought new set of problems and deprivatio…

At Point Loma, San Diego, I toured the USS Asheville , a Los Angeles -class attack submarine. While not a public tour, I was able to take photos. You get a real sense of how cramped a submarine is, even modern ones. All the moving parts, machinery, electronics, and equipment make for a very tight environment…