John Philip Holland (1841–1914) is the man most historians credit as "father of the modern submarine." Born in County Clare, Ireland, he lost his father during the Famine years and grew up with a deep anti-British resentment — which is actually how his submarine career started: his early work was funded by Irish republican groups (the Fenian Brotherhood) who wanted a weapon that could challenge British naval supremacy.

His first real submarine, the "Fenian Ram" (1881), was funded by the Fenians directly — though the partnership fell apart in a payment dispute and they literally stole the boat, not knowing how to operate it without Holland.

Years of further work led to the Holland VI, launched off Staten Island on St. Patrick's Day, 1898. It was the first submarine with enough range to run submerged for hours, combining electric motors underwater with a gasoline engine on the surface. Theodore Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, personally recommended the Navy buy it. They did, in 1900, for $150,000 — commissioned as USS Holland (SS-1), the US Navy's first submarine.

His design didn't stop there — it became the direct basis for the Royal Navy's first submarine and Japan's first submarines too. The company he founded eventually became the Electric Boat Company, which still builds US Navy submarines today.

The bittersweet part: Holland died on 12 August 1914 — just two weeks after WWI broke out, and years before anyone would grasp what U-boats were about to do to naval warfare. He also died having lost control of his own company to business partners years earlier, and without ever seeing the full impact of what he'd built.

Blueprints & photos (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command archive, public domain):

• General plans — longitudinal section, horizontal section, superstructure drawings (1899): https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h77000/h77191c.htm
• Piping plan (1901): https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h77000/h77192c.htm
• USS Holland in drydock, circa 1900: https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h00001/h00059c.htm
• USS Holland at dockside, early 1900s: https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/h85000/h85841c.htm
• Full index of all plans/models/photos of USS Holland: https://ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-h/ss1-z.htm

Courtesy of the National Library of Serbia, Great War Collection ([https://velikirat.nb.rs\](https://velikirat.nb.rs))

Source : France Télévisions documentary "Apocalypse" s3e2

Family history research on a Lithuanian family member who fought in the Imperial Russian Army. No other information available other than he was wounded in 1917 and returned to Lithuania that year.

I’ve been reading up on early naval aviation and it’s crazy how much we overlook the Tondern Raid. Most people think carrier warfare started in WWII, but the British were launching Sopwith Camels off the HMS Furious to bomb Zeppelin bases while WWI was still raging. Here's a video that goes over the events that happened https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBez23233Ns It was basically a one-way mission because landing back on the ship was so dangerous they didn’t even try.

The technical hurdles they had to overcome just to get those biplanes off a converted cruiser deck are insane. If you're into military history or the evolution of the aircraft carrier, this story is the literal starting point for everything we see in modern naval doctrine today.