The New American Veteran Interview

On a busy road in Rockledge, ripe with new businesses and nice new homes popping up like weeds, stands a non-descript building hundreds pass by every day. It is clean, the landscaping is manicured, you will see 20-30 cars and trucks there most days, and yet too few know what goes on behind the doors and glass awnings.

Over 70 years ago, just after the end of WWII, the U.S. military was faced with occupying Japan. With Tokyo Harbor riddled with hundreds of mines, getting American ships in and out was very dangerous.

But a resourceful engineer and inventor, Julian A. McDermott, developed a floating beacon the Navy could use to mark clear channels for its ships. This was a technologically advanced but simple, cost-effective solution that began his journey in creating specialty lighting for U.S. armed forces. A version of that light is still made today, and it continues to be installed on many Navy ships.

It is made by Phantom Products in Rockledge.

Fast-forward through changes in lighting technology, a couple of different manufacturing plants, and finally a move from a small town in Maryland to Brevard County, and you will find Phantom Products, and McDermott’s immediate family, still producing lighting for our military and still saving lives.