Naval History Blog

Bon Hom Richard

Sgt Dan Daly, USMC, 2nd MOH, 1915

U.S. Navy Aircraft

This blog was launched a few weeks ago with the intent to provide an open enviornment to encourage discussion and more importantly, interest in Naval history and to highlight the essential role that navies have played in the human experience.  Germain to this subject is the direction that studying history has taken as it has been presented, or ignored, in all levels of education, from grade school to the most prestigious institutions.  A recent post on the USNI Blog by the intrepid CDR Salamander hits the this target with the precision and force of a 16\” Mark 7. 

A failure of historic proportions

Just what does that phrase mean? What kind of intellectual background does it take to even make that statement?

Those who have raised children in the last three decades know the state of history education in our schools. We also know that our centers of higher education have more or less purged their history departments of military historians. Required history courses – where there are some – more often than not do not cover military actions in any kind of context or depth. When you fold in the fact that the Navy has an institutional bias towards technical fields of education – then it is no surprise that historical illiteracy runs rampant from E1-O10. Is this a bad thing, or just a nuisance?

From $100 dollar questions such as, “Which nation is younger, Belgium or the USA?” to $1,000 questions such as, “What is the source of the border conflicts between Bolivia, Chile, and Peru?”, we simply do not do history well. As a result, when we work with our partners we regularly embarrass ourselves from ISAF to UNITAS as we demonstrate our ignorance of not only our history – but that of the rest of the world.

Even when we narrow the scope down to naval history – historical blindnesshas had real, definable costs. When you look back at some of the Navy’s worst errors in the last decade from LCS, DDG-1000, and the influence of the Transformationalist Cult – they all derive from a poor understanding of the lessons of history; i.e. – Battle Cruisers and Patrol Hydrofoils proved decades ago the seduction of speed is not worth the tradeoffs; regardless of technology the MK-1 Mod-0 eyeball is the primary sensor in the littorals; every successful shipbuilding program has been the result of evolutionary instead of revolutionary change. The examples are legion when you expand the relearned basics during this war by the Army and USMC.

There are notable exceptions though. Ironically, two of the best leaders of this war, Gen. Petraeus, USA and Gen Mattis, USMC – are both men steeped in history. Especially Gen Mattis, his love of good books and fine history are well known. There is a lesson there, but let’s move on.

Read more: A failure of historic porportions

Looking for something fun to do with free admission.  Please consider our Navy’s Naval History enterprise which consists of a dozen official U.S. Navy museums, NHHC headquarters which is home to the Navy Library, the Navy Art Gallery, and the USS Constitution.

For more information, click here.

Can you Say Road Trip?

From our YouTube Channel: This 1946 Navy documentary considers the critical importance of sea power in Allied victory in the Pacific during World War II.

        Last Friday, April 16th the Navy Department Library was the recipient of a very generous donation. Mrs. Mary Lou Mawdsley, her son Alan Mawdsley, and her grandson Jimmy presented us with 59 cruise books collected by her late husband, Dr. Dean L. Mawdsley. The collection ranges from World War I to the Cold War, with a majority of them coming from the World War II era. 

        Cruise books are often compared to yearbooks, in that they tell the informal story of a ship and the people who have served onboard. Our collection contains nearly 3,000 cruise books and continues to grow.  The publication of cruise books began in the late 19^th century to commemorate special events such as the Great White Fleet’s world voyage, and a few were issued for vessels in World War I.  World War II helped establish a more widespread practice.  These books were not official US Navy publications, and were largely initiated, funded, and produced by the crew of the ship.     

        Dr. Mawdsley is the author of Cruise Books of the United States Navy in World War II, a bibliography published in 2004 by the former Naval Historical Center now the Naval History and Heritage Command.  Dr. Mawdsley was a retired physician with a passion for collecting books.  His passion grew into the bibliography, and he was considered an expert on World War II naval cruise books.  The contributions he made to the publication and now to our library are significant to researchers and cruise book enthusiasts, and we are very grateful for this incredible donation.

American POWs and Red Cross Girl, by Standish Backus, Watercolor, 1946, 88-186-AA

The Navy Art Collection has a vibrant and active traveling exhibitions program. Navy Art recognizes the continuing need for and significance of the patronage that comes from galleries and museums requesting the loan of artwork in public exhibits.

Galleries, museums and public educational institutions that have a public trust are considered the most desirable for exhibit placement. Navy and Department of Defense policy excludes institutions that operate for profit. Institutions that charge a fee must have non-profit status, where the proceeds of admission go to the maintenance of facilities and services for the public. All exhibits must be open to the general public without regard to race, sex, color, religion, or national origin. Exhibits are usually lent for a 6 to 12 week period, but can be longer.

Navy art has over 12 pre-designed exhibitions ready for loan with topics that range from the Revolutionary War, submarines, women in uniform and navy medical art. Single works of art are also available for loan.

Last year, the Oceanside Museum of Art requested a loan of 8 paintings by Standish Backus to be part of a larger exhibit entitled “Painting World War II: The California Watercolor Artist.” To initiate the loan, Oceanside sent Navy Art a facility report with information about the museum, a list of the specific paintings they wanted to borrow and dates for the exhibition. Navy Art then confirmed that the artwork was available for loan.

In March, the paintings (like the one shown below) were packed and shipped to California. The exhibition is due to open on April 18 and close on October 3.

From our YouTube Channel: This 1988 Navy documentary celebrates the reactivation of the Iowa class battleships, and recalls their historic service of the previous four decades.

On 19 April 1989, an explosion occurred in turret 2 of the battleship USS Iowa (BB 61) as the ship conducted gunnery practice near Puerto Rico. The explosion, which began in the gunpowder charge of the center gun, spread through the three gun rooms and much of the lower levels of the turret. Forty-seven Sailors died.

The problem of storing and handling large quantities of high explosives in a shipboard environment, whether in peactime or in combat, posed a major challenge for ship and ordnance designers from the earliest enclosed mounts of the late 19th century.

The possibility that a fire or explosion anywhere in the turret could spread to the magazines below and sink the ship resulted in continuing refinements to armor (to keep out enemy shellfire), complicated interlocks on powder and shell handling equipment (to prevent fire from having an uninterrupted path to the magazine), and crew procedures (to ensure that the mechanical systems would have a chance to work).

Turret explosions on Navy ships, while rare, caused significant loss of life, but internal protective systems prevented the magazine explosions that would have destroyed the ship. USS Mississippi (BB 41) had the misfortune to experience two: a peacetime explosion in 1924 that took 48 lives, and an explosion during a 1943 wartime shore bombardment mission that killed 43. Twenty sailors died and 36 were injured in a 1972 explosion in turret 2 of the cruiser USS Newport News (CA 148), operating off Vietnam. These tragedies, and the Iowa explosion, are a reminder that naval combatants and their crews handle dangerous things in dangerous situations for a living, and that the highest standards of crew training and ship design are nonnegotiable.

RIP Shipmates.  You stand Relieved.  We have the watch.