U.S. Navy

The 29th annual Fleet Week is continuing in Broward County through the weekend, as Navy sailors participate in community projects and take thousands of people on tours of their ships docked at Port Everglades.

The celebration is meant to showcase the military to residents. In addition to going aboard the Naval vessels, people can attend Navy concerts on Saturday and Sunday. The event coincides with the annual Fort Lauderdale Air Show on Saturday and Sunday.

A low-tech method is saving a threatened species of bird from getting sucked into jet engines at the Naval Air Station Key West airfield on Boca Chica Key.

It’s Broward Navy Day’s 28th Fleet Week celebration at Port Everglades. With military ships docking near Fort Lauderdale, people can actually walk on board and tour vessels like the U.S.S. Detroit and U.S.S. Kearsarge. 

Key West's Navy presence is more in the air than on the sea. But the Navy still has a pier on the island's waterfront and Navy ships sometimes pull in there.

Twenty-five years before the Spanish-American War,  the two countries bristled at each other across the Florida Straits, with a show of American Naval force assembled in Key West.

The Virginius Affair centered around the 1873 capture of an American ship that was helping Cuban rebels during the Ten Years War, an unsuccessful attempt to throw off Spanish rule from the island.

The Virginius was originally a Confederate blockade runner during the American Civil War. In the 1870s, it was carrying weapons to Cuban rebels. It was crewed by American and British citizens.

Three-quarters of a century ago and half a world away, the U.S. Navy won a decisive battle against Japan at Midway atoll in the northern Pacific. On Monday, Naval Air Station Key West held a ceremony to remember the battle and its legacy for the Navy and the nation.

"This critical U.S. victory stopped the growth of Japan in the Pacific," said Command Master Chief Lee Friedlander. "It put the United States in the position to begin shrinking the Japanese Empire with a yearlong series of island-hopping invasions and several even larger naval battles."

Constellation is an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, but she spends most of her time in the Pacific. She's part of the Navy's Marine Mammal program, based in San Diego.