From the American Revolution through the wars of the early twenty-first century, the navy developed from the Continental Navy established on October 6, 1775, with Esek Hopkins appointed commander and a first flotilla of five ships assembled that December, into a major force in U.S. military history. During the Revolution, John Paul Jones captured two British ships aboard the Ranger in 1777 on his way to France to inform Benjamin Franklin of Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga, and in 1779 defeated the British ship Serapis at the Battle of Flamborough Head, where he declared, "I have not yet begun to fight." In 1794 the U.S. Navy was formed and authorized to build six new frigates including Constitution, and in 1798 the Department of the Navy was created. Through the War of 1812, the Second Barbary War, slave trade patrols, anti-piracy patrols, the Mexican War, the Indian Wars, and the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1851, it expanded its role, while Congress in 1834 stipulated that the Marine Corps was part of the U.S. Navy and in 1850 Admiral Perry's fleet visited Japan and opened normal trade relations with the U.S. and Europe. In the Civil War, the Union ironclad Monitor and the Confederate ironclad Merrimack fought to a draw on March 8, 1862, and both sides made the first use of naval mines, torpedoes, and submarines. Congress later authorized construction of protected cruisers, battleships, and auxiliary vessels, and in 1898, after the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, George Dewey led the Asiatic Fleet to the Philippines and defeated the Spanish Navy in the battles of Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba. In the early twentieth century, the naval base at Guantanamo Bay was built to protect the new Panama Canal, the navy became the world's second largest under President Roosevelt, and it achieved the first airplane launch from a naval ship in 1910 and the first airplane landing on a naval ship in 1911. In World War I, the U.S. Navy sent a battleship group to Britain to join the British Grand Fleet, with most naval actions limited to convoy escort and troop transport, and on November 17, 1917, USS Fanning and USS Nicholson sank the German U-boat U-58 in the navy's first victory of that war. In 1921 the first aircraft carriers were commissioned, including USS Langley, Lexington, and Saratoga. In World War II, destroyers Kearny and Ruben James were torpedoed by German U-boats, Ruben James was lost, the Battle of the Atlantic centered on the fight against German U-boats, and at Midway in June 1942 Japan lost four aircraft carriers and air crews, beginning the ultimate defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In the 1950s the navy became the most technologically advanced branch of the U.S. military with nuclear powered super-carriers, ballistic missile submarines, jet aircraft, and missiles. In the Vietnam War it carried out Operation Eagle Pull and Frequent Wind, supported operations with air and offshore artillery, and played a major role on the coastal and inland waterways of Southeast Asia through the Brown Water Navy. In October-November 1983, Amphibious Squadron Four and Task Group 62 led by USS Independence supported Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. In the 1991 Gulf War, the navy launched hundreds of Tomahawk II cruise missiles, flew multiple sorties from six aircraft carriers, and received fire support from Missouri and Wisconsin. In 1999 it flew thousands of missions from aircraft carriers and land bases in Italy to stop ethnic cleansing, and in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq it participated in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom while continuing to play a major role in the War on Terror.