Last month, a truly unique piece of history found a new home in the collection of the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC). The 48 star battle ensign of the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE 413) was transferred from a private collection to the Material Section at NHHC. For those who aren’t familiar
Last month, the Naval Historical Foundation was the recipient of a generous donation of approximately 400 books from CNA. The donation was arranged by Captain Peter Swartz, USN (Ret), analyst at CNA, and a loyal member and supporter of the Foundation. Museum Store Manager Frank Arre went down to the CNA office located in Alexandria,
By Paula E. Calvin and Deborah A. Deacon, McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, NC & London (2011) Reviewed by Diana L. Ahmad, Ph.D. Art historians Paula Calvin and Deborah Deacon take readers on a journey through two and a half centuries of American military art as depicted by female artists. They demonstrated that war impacted
By Andre Sobocinski, Historian, U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery When the Naval Air Transport Service (NATS) R4D broke through the clouds of volcanic dust and smoke to land on Iwo Jima on March 6, 1945, it carried more than whole blood and medical supplies for the wounded. On board this flight was a
By Norman Polmar (Editor’s note: This is the eighth in a series of blogs by Norman Polmar, author, analyst, and consultant specializing in the naval, aviation, and intelligence fields. Follow the full series here.) A telephone call in early March 1974 from one of my consulting customers in the Navy Department alerted me to a
On Thursday, 2 May 2013, Naval Historical Foundation Executive Director Captain Todd Creekman, USN (Ret), his wife Debbie, and Digital Historian Dave Colamaria had the pleasure of attending the annual Society of Sponsors of the United States Navy luncheon. The event was held at the Westwood Country Club in Vienna. The featured speaker was former
The emotions captured by the War of 1812: patriotic fervor, anxiety, the immediacy of the moment, the joy of peace… all and more abound in In Their Own Words. Whether encouraging peers, issuing orders to subordinates, lamenting a hero’s death or reporting a glorious frigate action, these emotions spring from the stirring contemporary letters,
By Zach Kopin The Naval Historical Foundation recently acquired an 1878-vintage historical document, and generously donated it to the Naval History and Heritage Command’s rare book and document collection in the Navy Department Library. This document, a letter addressing the nineteenth century debate between staff officers and line officers, completes a pair, as the staff
Last night, the US Navy Museum hosted a special panel presentation entitled “An Underwater Ice Station Zebra: Recovering a Secret Spy Satellite Capsule from 16,400 ft Below the Pacific Ocean” The subject for the evening was the once classified 1972 mission to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Early that year, a film capsule from
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the return of American Prisoners of War held by the North Vietnamese. Many of the POWs were naval aviators, and the Naval Historical Foundation, in conjunction with the National Museum of the United States Navy, is working on a number of initiatives to remember the long ordeal endured
Written by Adrian K. Wood and Illustrated by Giuseppe Rava. Osprey Publishing, Ltd., Long Island City, NY. (2012) Reviewed by John R. Satterfield, DBA. Writing about human activities in the Bronze and early Iron Ages is a daunting task. Evidence from these eras is fragmentary at best, like a jigsaw puzzle with far more pieces
By Ken W. Sayers, Naval Institute Press: Annapolis, MD, (2012). Reviewed by Jennifer Daley The United States Navy has a strong history of developing unique vessels to combat specific roles beyond the realm of traditional battleships and submarines. In the 2012 publication, Uncommon Warriors: 200 Years of the Most Unusual American Naval Vessels, author Ken
By Thomas Boghardt, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2012) Reviewed by Capt. Winn Price USNR (Ret.) I thoroughly enjoyed this tale from the black world of cryptology. Espionage novels replete with the ‘shaken-not-stirred’ womanizers and drivers of fast cars, abound in fiction and non-fiction. Codebreakers have not received glorification in a similar genre of novels.
Edited by Kenneth E. Bingham. NMCB-8 Association, Ventura, CA (2013). Reviewed by Charles Bogart The subtitle of this book is “The 13-Man Teams That Helped Rural Vietnamese and who Fought Alongside the Special Forces.” The introduction of the book under review proclaims that it consists of excerpts taken from the book “COMCPAC REPORTS, Special Edition,
By Chuck Veit, Lulu.com, Raleigh, NC. (2012) Reviewed by David Kronenfeld Chuck Veit in Raising Missouri has put together a tidy little volume detailing a little known footnote of American naval history – the sinking and salvage of USS Missouri. This is Veit’s third book and continues in the vein of his focus on 19th
