Our Nation’s Inspiring Naval Heritage

USS Lexington CV-16 underway, November 1943

Some years ago, when Mom and Dad were still with us, and healthy, they were excited to be taken on a tour of “Big Mamie,” the battleship USS Massachusetts moored in Fall River. A floating museum, this wonderful exhibit is a living memorial to the brave crew and officers who served aboard her during World War II.

Dad was mesmerized. He had served aboard an aircraft carrier in the war and found many similar features aboard the Massachusetts, such as the narrow, crowded racks that the seamen slept in, elbows locked in the frame to keep from being tossed out in heavy seas. His descriptions of life aboard, roaring seas, battle stations, manning the twin-barrel 20mm antiaircraft gun, chipping paint, peeling spuds in the galley, veered between deadly boring and just plain deadly.

A few months ago, on a trip to Corpus Christi, Texas to visit his big sister, our 93-year-old aunt, we were stirred by these memories to visit the USS Lexington (CV-16), another floating museum. “The Blue Ghost,” an aircraft carrier launched in September, 1942, was initially to be named the Cabot. But when word arrived that the prior USS Lexington (CV-2) had been lost in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May of 1942, CV-16 quickly assumed her predecessor’s name, becoming the fifth US Naval vessel to honor the opening salvo of the Revolutionary War, the battle at Lexington, Massachusetts.

The prior Lexington, CV-2, was originally intended as a battlecruiser in 1916, but was repurposed as an aircraft carrier in 1922 due to a vestige of World War I which was intended to limit the number of battleships in the world’s navies. Little did the negotiators know at that time that aircraft carriers would become far more powerful than battleships. CV-2 was fortunate to be at sea during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and thereby survived to become part of the avenging fleet.

In May, 1942, Lexington CV-2 participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea. While US forces suffered heavy losses, this was considered a strategic victory. Lieutenant Edward “Butch” O’Hare, flying an F4F Wildcat from the flight deck of the Lexington, destroyed five attacking Japanese bombers and disabled one more, thereby preventing an attack on the Lexington. As a result of his bravery and effectiveness, he became the first naval recipient of the Medal of Honor. His citation read as follows:

“Having lost the assistance of his teammates, Lieutenant O'Hare interposed his fighter between his ship and an advancing enemy formation of 9 attacking twin-engine heavy bombers. Without hesitation, alone and unaided, he repeatedly attacked this enemy formation, at close range in the face of intense combined machine gun and cannon fire. Despite this concentrated opposition, Lieutenant O'Hare, by his gallant and courageous action, his extremely skillful marksmanship in making the most of every shot of his limited amount of ammunition, shot down 5 enemy bombers and severely damaged a sixth before they reached the bomb release point. As a result of his gallant action—one of the most daring, if not the most daring, single action in the history of combat aviation—he undoubtedly saved his carrier from serious damage.”

In spite of O’Hare’s bravery, the Lexington was attacked again on May 7, 1942, and was seriously, grievously, damaged. As a result, she was fired upon by an American destroyer to be scuttled, thereby avoiding her capture.

Following the loss of Lexington CV-2, O’Hare was reassigned to the USS Enterprise. The center of momentum of the war was changing in our favor, but the Japanese were still very dangerous. In November of 1943, he was lost in an attempt to repulse an attack on the Enterprise. His F4F Hellcat was never found. The first air ace, and naval Medal of Honor winner of World War II, was gone.

Meanwhile, the new Lexington CV-16 was creating havoc for the Japanese. Repeatedly attacked and reported sunk, she continually reappeared, patched and repaired. The Japanese called her the “ghost ship,” as she kept showing up after supposedly being sunk. This, along with her dark blue camouflage, inspired her crew to call her “The Blue Ghost”. She participated in several major World War II battles and survived, not decommissioned until 1991.

The Lexington is well worth a visit, if you venture to Corpus Christi. Many Navy veterans have served aboard her, including dear friends of ours.

And the next time you travel by air and pass through O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, be aware that you should be honoring Lt. Edward “Butch” O’Hare.

Password nonsense

We have all been tortured, for some time, by passwords.

Your password must be complex, we’ve been told. It must not contain any easily guessed patterns, such as “password” or “qwerty” or “123456” (actually among the most common passwords).

In fact, when setting up a new account, we are chided to follow their password rules, for instance:

Your password has to be at least 8 characters long.

Must contain at least one lower case letter,

one upper case letter,

one digit.

and one of these special characters ~!@#$%^&*()_+

So we get clever and come up with something like “Pa$$word1” (which follows the rules but is nonetheless easily guessed).

We are also encouraged to use a different password for each of our accounts: banking, email, credit card, Facebook, etc.

The resulting burden, to create different passwords for each account, each one complex, to remember them, and to change them periodically is enormous. (Oh, and don’t write them down).

Computers were supposed to make our lives easier, what the heck happened?

You can thank our federal government, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in particular. The above rules for creating a password are the result of a NIST recommendation in 2004. But the author of those recommendations, Bill Burr, has since apologized.

“In the end, [the list of guidelines] was probably too complicated for a lot of folks to understand very well, and the truth is, it was barking up the wrong tree,” said Burr. It turns out that short, complicated, passwords are easier to crack than long, simple ones. Burr was not totally at fault. There had been very little research into password security to build on, so he had to make his best guesses. And he was wrong.

NIST has since reconsidered. In June of 2017, they issued a new set of recommendations that should make our password lives much easier. The major changes are:

1.       Remove the requirement to periodically change passwords. A good password will remain so over time.

2.       Replace the complexity requirement (upper case, lower case, number, special characters) with longer passwords, up to 64 characters, which may also include spaces.

3.       Require that the website or application requesting that you create a password screen it against a dictionary of known compromised passwords before accepting it.

These changes would make your passwords much easier to create and remember and provide much greater security than the prior recommendations. For instance, with the new regime, you could create a password like this:

“I like Facebook because I can see what my grandkids are up to”

This password, 61 characters in length, would pose an enormous challenge to a brute-force attack because of the large number of bits of information and all their possible permutations.

There is only one problem. Even though this new recommendation was made mid-last year, almost no websites have been upgraded to allow such passwords. They will not accept it and will insist on some nonsense like “jHr$o8cRt4,” which is actually much easier to crack because it contains far fewer bits of information.

Here is the good news. Computers are becoming far more powerful and are now capable of identifying us based on our fingerprints or even by scanning our face. The newer iPhones already do this. It is now possible to unlock a bank ATM door and initiate a withdrawal based only on your thumbprint. And this technology will rapidly improve and expand, eventually replacing the need for any password.

What is a poor, hungry hacker to do? Almost certainly, they will escalate phishing attacks. A good example is the email that appears completely authentic, apparently from your bank, asking you to click a link in order to confirm account status (or some such excuse). The website you are directed to also looks completely authentic, and when you log in, you have just given away your credentials. How to defend against this? Don’t click that link!

If you think the request might be legitimate, use your browser to go directly to your bank’s website and conduct whatever business that needs done.

Another, perhaps more dangerous attack, is socially engineered to make you trust the sender. Say that a hacker has compromised the system of a friend and now has access to your email address. They will then send an email to you, apparently coming from your friend, saying “hey, what a great article!” and giving you a link to click. Don’t click that link!

Even though the email looks like it came from your friend, that is easily spoofed. And, if you click that link, your system is now exposed to malware.

In this murky, dangerous, world, you must at all times remain skeptical.

And don’t click that link!

An alpine sojourn

Deep snow - Cervinia, Italy

The Blizzard of 1978 dumped nearly three feet of snow on Southeastern New England in 33 hours. It is a searing event burned into Yankee lore.

Imagine a place that receives over 30 such “Blizzards of 1978” each and every year.

Cervinia, Italy, is located on the steep, southern slope of the Alps. The Matterhorn looms over the village, but its shape is a bit unfamiliar to us, the Italian visage, not the more familiar Swiss profile.

“Il Cervino,” the Italian name of the Matterhorn, looms nearly eight thousand feet above the village, which itself is at 6,700 feet. Cervinia served as a base of operations for alpine explorers who finally succeeded in 1865, after numerous deadly failures, in ascending the Italian side of the enormous 14,700-foot peak.

But we were here to ski.

Or so we thought, because upon our arrival, an enormous storm blew in from the North Atlantic, driving moisture across Ireland, England, France, and then up into the Alps where it was precipitated as heavy snow. For nearly three days, the ski slopes were closed due to high winds and deep snow. The road below the village was closed, and the outside world (and ski lift operators) were unable to reach us.

So we explored.

The first thing we noticed was the constant beehive of activity. From residents shoveling their doorsteps, to shop owners running snow blowers on their sidewalks, to huge diesel earthmovers dumping loads of snow into trucks to be carted off, everyone was in the snow removal business. Large, beefed up lawn tractors with front-end buckets cleared tight spaces in parking lots. Hotel employees cleared fire escapes of deep snow and chipped ice from the walks. Their energy was enormous.

We walked the small shopping district, ankle deep in snow in spite of a recent scraping. The snowfall was relentless. There was only one solution – an Italian bar.

Italian bars are unlike ours. Although they sell beer, wine, and liquor, the main attraction is the coffee and the food. They also tend to be smaller and brighter than ours, with large windows and bright lighting. But, oh my goodness, the food! Paninis, piadinas, salads, pizza slices, and more. And coffee – espressos and cappuccinos, lattes and macchiatos – the caffeine was absolutely levitating. It is difficult to describe the delicious result of these simple preparations.

We had found a particular bar that appealed to us. Operated by a mother and her son, they were efficient but kind, and patient with our pidgin Italian. Then we noticed that the local folks were among the frequent patrons. The mailman. The shopkeeper next door. The snowplow driver. This was not a typical tourist trap. And the quality of the food, and service, so attested.

Then, on day three, we skied. The lifts had been dug out and were running, the sun was bright, the sky was blue. It was time to head up the mountain.

After taking several lifts, we approached the ridge, at nearly 10,000 feet. Looking north, into Switzerland, we saw glaciers shot through with deep, blue, ice. To the south, Italy, with huge snowfields all above the tree line, and billowing fog in the valleys below. And above it all, the towering mass of Il Cervino, the Matterhorn. The vista was enormous, humbling.

And then we skied down, swooping and carving, feeling free as birds enjoying the sensation of flight. While there were many hundreds of other skiers on the mountain, it was so huge that we often saw no one, and absorbed the surrounding beauty in solitude. Descending, floating, thanking the mountain. These moments were spiritual, never to be forgotten.

The last day, another storm. So back to our Italian bar, for now the fourth time. Although the Italians don’t drink coffee with milk (lattes, cappuccinos), except in the morning, our now favorite barista didn’t criticize. After having paninis and several coffees, we told her, in pidgin Italian, that we were departing the next day. She held a hand to her heart, then reached out for a firm handshake and whispered, “Grazie!”

It was a too-short sojourn in northern Italy, to a locale that deals with 1,000 inches of snow each winter. The mountains were towering, the snowfields broad, the skiing intense, the glaciers immense.

But it was the people, the simple heart-to-heart contact, that mattered. We would return in a heartbeat.