Naval History Blog

Interested in reading any of these books?  Come visit the Navy Department Library at the Washington Navy Yard. 

America in Vietnam : the war that couldn’t be won / by Herbert Y. Schandler

America’s captives : treatment of POWs from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror / by Paul J. Springer

The blocking of Zeebrugge : Operation Z.O. 1918 / by Stephen Prince

Blood on the snow : the Carpathian winter war of 1915 / by Graydon A. Tunstall

British aircraft carriers 1939-45 / by Angus Konstam ; illustrated by Tony Bryan

The Cambridge companion to the Roman historians / edited by Andrew Feldherr

The Cambridge history of the Cold War / edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad

Cataclysm : General Hap Arnold and the defeat of Japan / by Herman S. Wolk

The Cockleshell raid : Bordeaux 1942 / by Ken Ford ; illustrated by Howard Gerrard

The complete Victoria Cross : a full chronological record of all holders of Britain’s highest award for gallantry / by Kevin Brazier

Conceiving the empire : China and Rome compared / edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler, Achim Mittag

The Coral Sea 1942 : the first carrier battle / by Mark Stille ; illustrated by John White

The empire project : the rise and fall of the British world-system, 1830-1970 / by John Darwin

The forts of New France : the Great Lakes, the Plains and the Gulf Coast, 1600-1763 / by René Chartrand ; illustrated by Brian Delf ; series editor Marcus Cowper

German battleships 1914-18 (2) : Kaiser, König and Bayern classes / by Gary Staff ; illustrated by Paul Wright

German commerce raider vs. British cruiser : the Atlantic & the Pacific 1941 / by Robert Forczyk

Hell in An Loc : the 1972 Easter Invasion and the battle that saved South Viet Nam / by Lam Quang Thi

Israel’s lightning strike : the raid on Entebbe, 1976 / by Simon Dunstan

Italian Blackshirt, 1935-45 / by P. Crociani & P. P. Battistelli ; illustrated by G. Rava

Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940 : truth, Justice and memory / by by George Sanford

Lincoln and the decision for war : the northern response to secession / by Russell McClintock

Regia Aeronautica : the Italian Air Force 1923-1945: an operational history / by Chris Dunning

Rommel’s desert war : waging World War II in North Africa, 1941-1943 / by Martin Kitchen

The Soviet counterinsurgency in the western borderlands / by Alexander Statiev

USN cruiser vs IJN cruiser : Guadalcanal 1942 / by Mark Stille

Violence and social orders : a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history / by Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, Barry R. Weingast

The war for Korea, 1950-1951 : they came from the north / by Allan R. Millett

Who dares wins : the SAS and the Iranian Embassy Siege 1980 / by Gregory Fremont-Barnes

Researching particular events in Naval History can be difficult if you don’t know where to look. The Navy Department Library has a multitude of resources available to help in your research, and if we don’t have something we are always available to consult on other possible resources. A great place to start as always is the Frequently Asked Questions on the Naval History and Heritage Command website. Our Online Reading Room under the Navy Department Library webpage is also a valuable resource. Here in the library we have many books, journals, and primary source material available to aide in your research. On our website we also offer bibliographies and research guides, a list of our special collections, and even a portion dedicated to wars and conflicts of the US Navy. Visit our website, give us a call, or better yet come into the library and let us help you find the information you seek.

Last week we talked about getting started on researching a family member who served in the US Navy.  This week we would like to take a minute to talk about researching ships.  A great starting point is the Naval History and Heritage Command Frequently Asked Questions on Ship’s History and Record Logs.  This will provide you with very informative links on Deck Logs and the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships among other resources.  Here in the Navy Department Library we have numerous books on ships, plus a unique collection available on individual ships called the ZC Files. 

Our ZC files  are an incredible resource when it comes to researching ships.  The ZC series comprises material relating predominantly to 19th century ships of the US Navy. Data on a few Revolutionary, Confederate, and private ships also are found, as are some files on 20th century ships. Examples of the types of materials in individual files include: (1) brief ship histories; (2) movement reports; (3) newspaper and magazine articles; (4) official Office of Naval Records and Library, and Naval History Division correspondence relating to the history of the ship. Twentieth century material in this collection includes items such as commissioning brochures and welcome aboard pamphlets.

In previous posts we’ve highlighted many of the incredible books we have in our collections here at the Navy Department Library, but did you know that we have a very nice historical manuscripts collection as well?  This collection is composed of US Navy-related original letters, documents and manuscripts from the 18th to the 20th century. Highlights include John Paul Jones’ calling card collection from French and Russian acquaintances; a log from the frigate HMS Lizard during the Revolutionary War; documents relating to the service of Naval hero Asa Curtis during the War of 1812; and a scrapbook of Seaman 1st Class William G. Kelly, who served in the Yangtze Patrol in the 1930s. Other items include a wide range of signed documents and letters written by and to personages such as William Bainbridge, John Dahlgren, George Dewey, David Farragut, Isaac Hull, Abraham Lincoln, Matthew Maury, James Monroe, Matthew C. Perry, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thomas Tingey, Thomas Truxton, and Gideon Welles.

Manuscript materials are unavailable for loan and must be consulted in the library.  Photocopying of manuscripts, as well as fragile items, is generally prohibited, though the use of digital cameras by researchers to reproduce non-copyrighted materials is permitted. Permission to photocopy a few pages may be granted by the reference staff, contingent upon the physical state of items. All photocopying of materials shall be done by the reference staff, or under their close supervision. The use of personal scanners by non-library staff personnel must be approved by the reference staff on a document-by-document basis.

There are wonderful primary source materials waiting for you right here at the Navy Department Library.  Come in to view our manuscripts and let us help you tell your story.

Last week 230 volumes of nautical accident investigation reports from the National Transportation Safety Board were donated to the Navy Department Library.  These reports detail the incidents and investigations into marine accidents for the period 1979-2006.  Several of the reports focus on accidents involving US Navy vessels and other vessels.  These reports detail such incidents as the sinking of small passenger vessels to groundings of large transport ships, to include the May 1989 grounding of the Exxon Valdez.  The in-depth reports cover crew information, meteorological information, rescue efforts, and the testing and research done to investigate the incidents.  These reports are a wealth of information from analysis to the findings of the investigations.  These books are currently being processed and will join our collection some time in the next few weeks.  We hope this exciting new addition will become a valuable resource for researchers in the very near future.

This week marks graduation for the Class of 2010 across the nation.  High school students may be graduating and heading off to enlist in the Navy, and Naval Academy Midshipmen and NROTC students are soon ready to begin their careers as Navy officers.  As part of our incredible collection the Navy Department Library contains some of the books that mark these momentous occasions. 

 Lucky Bags are an incredible resource from the Naval Academy  and our collection dates from 1849 to 2001.  We also have NROTC year books from universities and colleges such as Notre Dame, Marquette University, and the University of Washington.  There are even books from the Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island from the 1950s and 1960s.  Our collections also include large runs of training or recruit books from Naval Training Centers in San Diego, Orlando, Great Lakes, and Bainbridge. 

 While not every year or company is represented it is still an impressive and treasured collection.  For a more complete listing of the training and education yearbooks in our library please visit our website.  These books are available to the public in our library spaces or in some cases inter-library loans may be requested if you are unable to visit us in person.

 Last week the Naval History and  Heritage Command was host to the 2010 National Historical Conference and Naval History Workshop.  This conference brought together those working to preserve and share naval history, allowing talk about how historians, museums, and libraries and archives are getting the job done and to learn from each other.  One of the sessions focused on libraries and archives, highlighting the amazing naval history collections that are available. 

Staff members from the Library of the Marine Corps, Archives and Special Collections; the library at the National Naval Aviation Museum; and the Operational Archives of NHHC shared with attendees some of the interesting items they have in their collections, and why these collections are just as important as the objects held in the museums. 

Libraries and archives tell the stories behind the objects.  The Marine Corps Archives and the NHHC Operational Archives mainly tell the official stories of the US Navy and Marine Corps.  These are the command histories submitted annually, the after action reports, and deck logs.  They also tell the more personal stories through collections of personal papers and diaries of both influential and not so well known Sailors and Marines.  These collections also tell the social history of the organizations through recruiting posters, photographs, and menus from major events. 

Libraries such as the one at the National Naval Aviation Museum help to humanize the objects in the museum and provide the social history aspect of the conflicts and battles.  Collections of photos, diaries, flight log books, maps, and film footage help tell the story of naval aviation to future generations long after those original aviators are gone.

The Navy Department Library helps to tell the scholarly and social history of the Navy.  With over 150,000 volumes of naval history and an extensive manuscript collection there are many stories waiting to be discovered.  We have everything from cruise books to ordnance manuals and most anything in between.

Whether you are looking for the official history or what it felt like to be a part of history, libraries and archives are the place to look.  Call and arrange a visit to one of the historical libraries or archives, and let us help you research and tell your story.

There is no doubt that we have some very unusual and unique items in our 150,000 item collection.  Some are on display in our Rare Book Room, but others like this little book are tucked away safely on shelves waiting to be found.  This particular item was found on a completely unrelated search last week. 

We had a question regarding whether or not a particular anchor could have come from a “Mosquito Boat” from the World War II era.  After exhausting our anchor resources, including line drawings of anchors we decided to try searching for mosquito boats in our catalog.  The record for this particular book showed up, and we were intrigued by the fact that the author was listed as Dr. Suess.  Curious as to why we had a book by Dr. Suess in our collection we went up to Special Collections to find the undersized book.  Sure enough here was a small book obviously illustrated by Dr. Suess and published by the Government Printing Office in 1944. 

This diminutive book chronicles the life and times of Ann, the Anopheles Mosquito and warns against the spread of Malaria.  We’ve had the book digitized and it will join our collection in the Online Reading Room in the next couple of weeks.  For now here is a preview of a few of the illustrations.