Navy U S

The remains of a Navy pilot shot down at the onset of the Persian Gulf War -- the first U.S. combat casualty of the 1991 conflict -- have been recovered by Marines in western Iraq and identified by military specialists. The findings, based on dental records, appear to finally bring to an end the mystery of just what happened to Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher. Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had announced that Speicher was the first U.S.

Flight was always on his mind. As he plowed soybean fields and chopped cotton in his tiny hometown of Heth, Ark., Jerry Hodges passed the time by imagining himself streaking across the sky in the cockpit of a Navy plane. As a teenager growing up in the 1930s, it seemed an impossible dream. There was no such thing as a black fighter pilot and the Navy was not about to accept its first. But on Sunday, a gray-haired Hodges regaled a small audience with tales of flying bombers during World War II.

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Thursday ordered the toughest set of restrictions ever imposed on the U.S. Navy's use of mid-frequency sonar off the Southern California coast as part of a protracted court battle to protect whales and other marine mammals from underwater sonic blasts.

A group of small Iranian boats charged and threatened three American warships just outside the Persian Gulf, military officials said Monday, elevating tensions and illustrating how easily a military confrontation could develop between U.S. and Iranian forces. The five Iranian boats approached the warships Sunday as they passed through the Strait of Hormuz on their way into the Persian Gulf. U.S.

A federal judge in Los Angeles declined Monday to set aside her order forbidding the Navy from using powerful sonar in training missions in Southern California waters unless it operates farther than 12 miles off the coast and adopts other measures to lessen the effect on whales and dolphins. The Navy is expected to appeal Judge Florence Marie Cooper's decision and ask that her injunction temporarily be removed to allow training exercises to begin later this month without the restrictions.

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Thursday temporarily set aside some of the tough restrictions on upcoming naval exercises off Southern California that employ a type of sonar linked to the injury and death of whales and dolphins. The decision by Judge Florence-Marie Cooper defers to President Bush, who moved earlier this week to exempt the Navy's exercises from environmental laws that formed the basis for a long-running court case between the Pentagon and environmentalists.

The California Coastal Commission argued in federal court Tuesday that President Bush violated the U.S. Constitution by trying to overturn a court order that restricted the Navy's use of a type of sonar linked to the deaths of marine mammals. The commission's attorneys said Bush's move to exempt the Navy sonar training exercises in Southern California waters from federal law violated the Constitution's separation-of-powers doctrine.

A sonar technician listening through his headset caught the trail of an "enemy" submarine just before a line of warships cruised through waters between Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands. The whooshing sound of bubbles created by the submarine's propeller had been picked up by passive acoustic monitoring, made famous in the movie "The Hunt for Red October."

As their craft glides at high speed over the chilly waters behind the massive Haditha Dam, the U.S. sailors aboard Riverine Patrol Boat 13 spot a slow-moving rowboat that seems out of place. Navy Lt. Jeffrey Werby cannot immediately be sure whether the rowboat spells danger. "They could be just scrawny guys trying to make a living or fishing," says Werby, officer in charge of a four-boat squad based at the dam. "Or they could be something."

The trial of a former Navy sailor on terrorism charges opened Monday with British investigators describing how they found details about the vulnerability of the sailor's naval battle group in the London home of an alleged terrorism supporter. American prosecutors allege that the sailor, Hassan Abujihaad, sent those details to London. Abujihaad, 32, of Phoenix, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he provided material support to terrorists with intent to kill U.S.