21 July Daily Shipmate

Tuesday, 21 July 2026

1944 - Task Force 53, under RADM Richard L. Conolly ’14, USN, supported by naval gunfire and carrier aircraft, lands Marines and Army troops on Guam in the Mariana Islands. 2LT George Skinner ’45, USMCR was killed in action during the invasion of Guam while a member of HQ Company, 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. George entered the Naval Academy from Princeton, Illinois, but resigned in January 1943 because he was “deficient in studies.” He entered the Marines immediately following his resignation, and in September 1943 graduated from the Reserve Officers training school at Quantico, Virginia. For a time he was at New Hebrides in the South Pacific where he was the “service boxing champion.” George was survived by his parents, a sister, and a brother. Other alumni lost on this day are listed at Virtual Memorial Hall.

 

1969 - During the Apollo XI mission to the moon, astronaut Neil Armstrong steps down the ladder of the lunar lander Eagle onto the surface of the moon, uttering the famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong is a former naval aviator who flew combat missions over Korea.

 

Content in “Today in Navy, Marine Corps and USNA Memorial Hall History” is generously provided by our partners and fellow alumni at the Naval History and Heritage Command and the Run to Honor SIG, which supplies the USNA Memorial Hall content. We are grateful for their partnership in preserving and sharing this history, and the Daily Shipmate is proud to serve as a distribution platform. You can learn more or provide feedback through their respective websites hyperlinked above.

Academy & Graduate happenings

On the cover: The Class of 2029 closed out its plebe year by completing the Herndon Monument climb in 2 hours, 17 minutes and 36 seconds. MIDN Lincoln Hedberg ’29 capped the monument. Photo by Luke Sohl, USNA AA&F Communications.

 

Featured this month: Brigadier General Charles Duke ’57, USAF (Ret.), is a member of one of the most exclusive fraternities on earth. He is one of four living men who have walked on the moon. Only 12 men have left footprints on the moon and three of those are U.S. Naval Academy alumni.

 

It was the privilege of a lifetime to meet and interview Duke in April near his home in South Carolina. He was the youngest man to moonwalk at 36 years old in 1972. At 90, Duke is a vibrant storyteller who still travels the world and looks like he would jump on the next rocket to revisit the moon.

 

We are proud to share his story in the July-August issue of Shipmate and honored to have him as the first guest on the soon-to-be launched Voices from Orbit podcast that will feature Naval Academy alumni astronauts.

 

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The Naval Academy Board of Visitors met 20 July at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Established by Title 10 U.S. Code 8468, the mission of the Board of Visitors is “To inquire into the state of morale and discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods, and other matters relating to the Naval Academy, and, within 60 days of its annual meeting, to submit its findings and recommendations to the President of the United States.” Board of Visitors records are publicly available on the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) Database.

Each June, Naval Academy midshipmen travel to Bergen, Norway for EX SEA WARRIOR, a demanding leadership exercise hosted by the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy. This year, SOCM Jonathan Bertera led four midshipmen through the exercise alongside Finnish Naval Academy cadets. The value of SEA WARRIOR isn't the physical difficulty itself — it's what that difficulty reveals about character and judgment when comfort and certainty are stripped away. The exercise's most instructive moments were ethical rather than physical. In one scenario, a midshipman acted on a supposed authority figure's word without independently verifying a threat — a decision that became a powerful lesson in the danger of deferring judgment under pressure.

Government & Military News

The U.S. military carried out a wave of airstrikes in Iran over the weekend as it announced that a third U.S. service member had been killed in military operations since Friday. The U.S. attacks were the ninth consecutive day of bombing since peace talks between the two countries collapsed in dispute over a memorandum of understanding focused on the Strait of Hormuz, the key oil shipping waterway. U.S. Central Command said a service member was killed during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The attorney for an imprisoned Navy admiral told Military.com that efforts are underway to either get his conviction reversed, or to receive a pardon from President Donald Trump. Retired four-star Navy ADM Robert P. Burke, 63, of Coconut Creek, Fla., once the second-highest uniformed Navy officer who formerly commanded forces in Africa, Europe and Russia, was found guilty in May 2025 of conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, performing acts affecting a personal financial interest, and concealing material facts from the United States following a five-day trial. He was sentenced in September to six years in prison. His case received revived attention in May 2026, when Burke's alleged co-conspirators—Next Jump co-CEOs Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger—were found not guilty of conspiracy or bribery by a federal jury in Washington D.C. Kim and Messenger were on trial in 2025, with their cases resulting in a hung jury and a mistrial.

For troops and civilian Pentagon employees hoping that changing marijuana laws mean they might be able to partake, that dream has now gone up in smoke. The Department of Defense confirmed this month that weed is still off limits. The department clarified its policy in response to efforts elsewhere in the federal government to reclassify marijuana, including state-licensed medical marijuana. In a 9 July memo, Undersecretary of Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata noted that “this change would not decriminalize marijuana under Federal law.” “Service members are reminded that the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) prohibits certain actions, including the wrongful use, possession, manufacture, or distribution of marijuana, and attempts to commit such acts,” Tata wrote in the memo.

Marines operate in jungle environments, hot deserts, and Arctic expanses. Like with other parts of the military, severe heat and cold pose a real risk to them. And now the Corps wants Marines to do better at tracking extreme temperature conditions to prevent them from ending up as hot or cold weather casualties. This month, the Marine Corps issued an administrative notice for its Heat and Cold Stress Injury Prevention Program. It’s the first update in more than a decade, with step-by-step directives to base commanders, unit leaders and medical personnel to be prepared for extreme temperatures and to prevent heat-related problems.

Local, Education & other academy news

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The Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel could shed its big white box next year ahead of reopening in 2028. The chapel’s renovation was originally envisioned to take about four years, when it started in 2019. Now seven years into the project, crews have faced numerous delays and ballooning costs after discovering asbestos and alignment issues with the steel structure. The renovation was expected to cost $335 million, according to a contract last year. The building went up in the 1960s for $3.54 million and in 2018 the initial cost for renovations was estimated at about $68 million.

Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy are enhancing battlefield adaptability with a new weapon mount that increases the versatility of the Army’s next-generation M250 automatic rifle. In support of the 2026 Projects Day Research Symposium focus on supporting the warfighter, cadets in the Small Caliber Weapon Mount capstone design team developed solutions for real-world applications. Through collaboration between the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering alongside the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center , cadets developed an innovative approach to employ the M250 Automatic Rifle on the M192 tripod.

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