Dear Naval Historical Foundation Family,

Welcome back to Thursday Tidings.

On 20 July 1969, Former Navy pilot Neil Armstrong is the first man to set foot on the moon, saying That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong is Commander of Apollo 11, which during its 8-day mission lands on the Sea of Tranquility. Michael Collins is the Command Module Pilot and Edwin Buzz E. Aldrin Jr., is the Lunar Module Pilot. In honor of that historic date this week, we are dedicating this Thursday Tidings to Astronauts in the United States Navy. In case you haven’t seen it, there are quite a few articles written about Navy astronauts in previous years on our website blog. If you haven’t seen them, this is a perfect opportunity to read some great articles from our archives! From members of the Mercury Seven like Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra to the astronauts of today, Naval aviators have earned their wings of gold as well as the coveted United States Astronaut Badge. As of 2022, there have been 80 astronauts (former and current) who have served in the United States Navy. 

Lt Col Geoffrey R. Brasse reviews Leaders: Profiles in Courage and Bravery in War and Peace 1917-2020 this week. We have once again included some helpful links on the U.S. Navy's role in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Our next Second Saturday on the civilian control of the U.S. Navy in the early Republic is listed below in this email. Look for registration details soon (as well as for the Knox Awards Reception coming soon)

As always, fair winds and following seas shipmates. This email is best viewed as a webpage for your reading convenience and best quality.

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Our Next Second Saturday 

Commanding Petty Despots: The American Navy in the New Republic

13 August 2022 | 11 am

Please join us in a historical discussion about civilian control of the Navy established in the early days of the nation as documented by Marine Corps University historian Tommy Sheppard in his recent book  Commanding Petty Despots: The American Navy in the New Republic. We have invited two former Secretaries (to be named later) that will offer commentary.  

Registration details will be available soon. 

The event will occur LIVE on our YouTube page on the morning of 13 August 2022. 

SAVE THE DATE 

THURSDAY AUGUST 25, 2022

Commodore Dudley W. Knox Honors --- Donald Bittner and Norman Friedman! 

Registration details soon coming to www.navyhistory.org! 

Watch the Recap

The Balisle Report

Surface Ship Readiness--Why It Was Chartered, What It Said, What Was Done, Is It Still Relevant?

Did you miss our latest Second Saturday on the Balisle Report and Surface Ship Readiness? You can watch the full program on our YouTube page by following the link HERE. This event featured VADM Peter Daly, VADM Phil Balisle, and RADM Brad Hicks.

Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II

By Paul Kennedy

Naval Order of the United States History Night 

13 July 2022

In this engaging narrative, brought to life by marine artist Ian Marshall’s beautiful full‑color paintings, historian Paul Kennedy grapples with the rise and fall of the Great Powers during World War II. Tracking the movements of the six major navies of the Second World War—the allied navies of Britain, France, and the United States and the Axis navies of Germany, Italy, and Japan—Kennedy tells a story of naval battles, maritime campaigns, convoys, amphibious landings, and strikes from the sea. From the elimination of the Italian, German, and Japanese fleets and almost all of the French fleet, to the end of the era of the big‑gunned surface vessel, the advent of the atomic bomb, and the rise of an American economic and military power larger than anything the world had ever seen, Kennedy shows how the strategic landscape for naval affairs was completely altered between 1936 and 1946.

Paul Kennedy is J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, Director of International Security Studies, and Distinguished Fellow of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University. He is internationally known for his writings and commentaries on global political, economic, and strategic issues. Kennedy was born in June 1945 in the northern English town of Wallsend, Northumberland, near the shipyards where his father and uncles worked. He obtained his BA at Newcastle University and his DPhil at the University of Oxford. He is a former fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University, and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Bonn. He holds many honorary degrees and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in 2000 for services to history and elected a fellow of the British Academy in June 2003. Kennedy is the author or editor of more than twenty books. His best-known work is The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which provoked an intense debate on its publication in 1988 and has been translated into more than twenty languages. In 1991, Kennedy edited a collection entitled Grand Strategies in War and Peace. He helped draft the Ford Foundation-sponsored report issued in 1995, The United Nations in Its Second Half-Century, which was prepared for the fiftieth anniversary of the UN.

The Parliament of Men contemplates the past and future of the United Nations. His 2013 book, Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War, is history through the eyes of problem-solvers during World War II.

WATCH THE PRESENTATION (Hosted By NHF historian Dr. David Winkler)

New Oral History Available -- 

CAPT Robert D. Rawlins, USN (Ret.)

Submarine Commander

Ballistic and Fast Attack Submarines

Robert D. Rawlins was born in Pennsylvania in 1926 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1947. He served in the amphibious forces before entering the submarine force in 1951. Before graduating from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey in 1958 with an MS degree in Electronic (Acoustic) Engineering he served on three diesel submarines. After completing nuclear power training in 1960, he served on four nuclear-powered submarines, two of which he commanded. In 1971, he worked at the Pentagon and was selected as part of negotiating team that was the highest ranking U.S. military delegation to visit the Soviet Union since 1945. The negotiations ultimately resulted in an agreement between the two countries. He also commanded a submarine tender in Rota, Spain, and his last command before retiring in 1977 was of the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in New London, CT.

READ THE ORAL HISTORY

10 Space travelers Who Served in the U.S. Navy

(NHF Blog, 4 May 2014)

ALAN SHEPARD

RANK: Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.)

MISSIONS: MR-3, Apollo 14

NOTABLE: First American in Space

NEIL ARMSTRONG

RANK: Lieutenant (junior grade), USN

MISSIONS: Gemini 8, Apollo 11

NOTABLE: First Person to Walk on Moon

PETE CONRAD

RANK: Captain, USN (Ret.)

MISSIONS: Gemini 5, Gemini 11, Apollo 12, Skylab 2

NOTABLE: Third Person to Walk on Moon (Ocean of Storms)

KEN MATTINGLY

RANK: Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.)

MISSIONS: Apollo 16, STS-4, STS-51-C

NOTABLE: 1 of 24 Astronauts to Walk on Moon

JIM LOVELL

RANK: Captain, USN (Ret.)

MISSIONS: Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8, Apollo 13

NOTABLE: First to Fly in Space Four Time

WALLY SCHIRRA

RANK: Captain, USN (Ret.)

MISSIONS: Mercury-Atlas 8, Gemini 6A, Apollo 7

NOTABLE: Mercury Seven Astronaut

KATHRYN SULLIVAN

RANK: Captain, USNR (Ret.)

MISSIONS: STS-41-G, STS-31, STS-45

NOTABLE: First Woman to Walk in Space

WENDY LAWRENCE

RANK: Captain, USNR (Ret.)

MISSIONS: STS-67, STS-86, STS-91, STS-114

NOTABLE: First Female USNA Grad to Fly in Space

SUNITA WILLIAMS

RANK: Captain, USN (Ret.)

MISSIONS: STS-116, Expedition 14, Expedition 15, STS-117, Soyuz TMA-05M, Expedition 32, Expedition 33

NOTABLE: Longest Single Spaceflight by a Woman (Record)

CHRISTOPHER CASSIDY

RANK: Commander, USN

MISSIONS: STS-127, Expedition 35/36 (Soyuz TMA-08M)

NOTABLE: Astronaut and Navy SEAL

The Battleship Guns at NASA's AMES Research Center

(NHF Blog, 24 February 2015)

Battleship guns helped win the Second World War. What about the race to the moon?

Bob Fish, author, and USS Hornet Museum trustee, recently visited NASA’s AMES Research Center in Sunnyvale, CA, to investigate the possibility of cooperation and collaboration of STEM-related programming. While there, Bob visited the Hypervelocity Flight Test Facility with their engineers. He was then guided into the original 1960s era hyper-velocity test lab which consisted of an old projectile acceleration tube that is now rarely used. To his surprise, Bob noticed the inscription on the breach of the barrel read “US Navy.” It was in fact a Mark 6 16-inch battleship gun!

The connection between battleship guns and NASA research is over a half-century old.

The Hypervelocity Free-Flight Facilities (HFFF) inside the ballistic range complex at NASA-Ames is the only aero-ballistic range in North America with a controlled environment test section. Along with the Electric Arc Shock Tube (EAST) facility, the Hypervelocity Free-Flight Aerodynamics Facility (HFFAF) has been in operation since the 1960s, at the height of the space race.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Norman's Corner: An Astronaut Underwater

By Norman Polmar

(NHF Blog, 25 November 2013)

I knew an astronaut. We were friends for a few years. We were not close, but we were on a first-name basis.

Commander M. Scott Carpenter was the second American to orbit the earth and the fourth American in space. Scott was a naval aviator. He was in a Navy training program at the end of World War II and, after college, in 1949 entered flight training; he earned his wings in early 1951. He flew P2V Neptune patrol planes, including surveillance missions along the coasts of the Soviet Union and China. Subsequently, he attended test pilot school and served as a Navy test pilot.

He was one of seven military pilots selected for Project Mercury in 1959, the American effort to put a man in space. After serving as backup pilot for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, Scott flew the capsule Aurora 7, which orbited the earth for 4 hours, 56 minutes in May 1962. Fuel exhaustion forced him to take manual control of the craft, the first time that had occurred in the U.S. space program.

Scott never again flew in space; a motorbike accident caused his grounding. In the fall of 1963, he entered the Navy’s SEALAB program—he was going into “inner space” with the Navy’s Deep Submergence Systems Project (DSSP—established in 1964). In 1965, in SEALAB II off the coast of California, Scott spent a record 30 consecutive days living on the ocean floor at a depth of 205 feet. He then briefly returned to NASA for a ground position.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Navy Photographer Tells the Story of Apollo 11 Recovery

By PHC Milt Putnam, USN (Ret)

(NHF Blog, 1 February 2012)

June 27, 1969 – Naval Air Station, Imperial Beach, California

A banging on my door at Naval Air Station, Imperial Beach, California, shook me out of a deep sleep. It was 4 AM. Bill Case, a Senior Chief Journalist, from Pacific Fleet Headquarters Hawaii, was there with a big smile on his face. He asked, “Is your bag packed? We’re leaving for the Apollo 11 recovery this morning.” I replied “Take off time for USS Hornet is 10 hundred hours.” We talked for about an hour and finally he crawled into an empty bunk in my room so we could get a couple hours sleep. Bill and I had become friends during the Apollo 8 recovery, December 1968 on USS Yorktown, and Apollo 10 recovery, May 1969 on USS Princeton. Apollo 8 and 10 were the first manned flights to orbit the moon.

In late June, eight HS-4 helicopters with “Black Knight” flight crews landed on USS Hornet (CVS-12) seventy-five miles off the California coast. At Pearl Harbor the ship was loaded with additional recovery equipment, and US Navy Underwater Demolition Team 11 (UDT-11). Also boarding were civilian television crews, magazine, newspaper photographers and writers, including my photography friends Walter Green and Berry Sweet of The Associated Press and Pete Cosgrove with United Press International. Lee Jones, a NASA motion picture photographer, also joined us. Lee would fly the Apollo 11 recovery mission with me as he had during the Apollo 8 and 10 recoveries.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Leaders: Profiles in Courage and Bravery in War and Peace 1917-2020

By Robin Knight

Reviewed by Lt Col Geoffrey R. Brasse, U.S. Air Force

Considering Knight is a Pangbourne alumnus, the book does carry the feel of an alumni written book to promote their alma mater. The book’s organization is closer to an obituary page, highlighting each person’s life without strongly connecting the stories. Organizing the stories by battle, ship, or year may have allowed the reader to appreciate the history and human connections together instead of as stand-alone events. One example is the siege of Malta, referenced several times in different stories without any connection to other school graduates. As his third literary work related to Pangbourne, Knight has substantial documentation and details covering a century of alumni. His love for the school and its history helps the reader feel the character and struggles of many graduates, making it an enjoyable leisure read.

Continue Reading the Full Review Here

If you are interested in biography, please consider reviewing Between Land and Sea: A Cold Warrior’s Log, by RADM Phil Dur, USN (Ret.).

Guidelines for getting involved in the NHF Book Review program can be found here,

and a list of titles available for review can be found here.

History in the Making: The U.S. Navy and the Ukrainian Crisis -- Select Links and Topics of Interest

We are currently witnessing history in the making with the situation involving the Russian invasion of Ukraine beginning last week. How does the U.S. Navy fit in? How are strategists, theorists, and journalists gauging the role of the U.S. Navy in any impending conflict? Here are several articles of note that seek to answer these questions as the situation progresses. Article opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect any stance by the Naval Historical Foundation. 

• Russians Used Sub-Launched Missiles to Strike Vinnytsia Business Center (USNI)
• Check Out The Three Types of Coastal Patrol Craft the US is Sending to Ukraine (SOFREP)
• SOFREP Interviews ROK/US Navy SEAL Ken Rhee About His Recent Deployment to Ukraine (SOFREP)

60mm Electrothermal-Chemical Gun Projectile

By John L. Morris

At NAVSEA in the early 1990’s one of my responsibilities was managing the research and development effort known as the Electrothermal-Chemical gun (ETC Gunfor short) and the parallel effort known as the Small Caliber Smart Munition (SCSM.). 60mm bore size was common to both. FMC Corporation (later became United Defense) and GE (later Martin Marietta) were the contractors for ETC and SCSM respectively. The 60mm test slug pictured was fired at United Defense in Minneapolis, MN on December 1, 1994, while I was there for a program review. The company recovered the tortured steel test slug, now about 60% of pre-firing weight, and “presented” it to me while still warm. I asked the Navy Plant Representative office (NAVPRO) to check whether I, as a civil servant, could accept such a gratuity, in light of all the “ethics” training we were receiving at the time. They replied that the scrap metal value was under the maximum allowed for a gift at that time, so I kept it. United Defense had at least one 60mm “Mann Barrel” test firing fixture, and a very large 10-shot revolver-type cannon used for ETC test firings (see video). These smoothbore guns could fire either conventional rounds containing common, energetic military solid propellants or inert substances such as polyethylene, which was turned into high-pressure plasma by passing a huge electrical current through it. Creating this huge burst of electric current was one of many challenges in “weaponizing” ETC technology. Here’s a report.

The SCSM was to be fired from the 60mm ETC gun and was designed to be capable of maneuvering-on-command in flight to intercept airborne targets. In I think1996 I watched from NSWC Dahlgren’s Range Control tower as the final “complete” SCSM round of the contract was fired. Afterward the SCSM engineers told me they thought they had seen the projectile maneuver slightly but no proof was provided, so I had to discount that report. However, a tremendous amount of data was collected from the design and testing of these devices. The programs were conducted largely as Independent Research and Development projects where the companies were funded to pursue “high risk” technologies that wouldn’t fit the usual lower-risk weapons developments undertaken by the Navy to put required weapons in the fleet within a few years. Both programs faced huge technical hurdles, way too many to “declare victory” when the funding ran out, but they both served as building blocks for subsequent programs. These programs were followed by other high-tech gun technology work such as the much-publicized electric “Rail Gun.”

Last Chapter For U-853

By Ensign D. M. Tollaksen, USN

(December 1960, Proceedings)

A sunken Nazi U-boat in 20 fathoms of water a few miles south of Newport has aroused keen interest in skin-diving circles in Rhode Island. During the past year, newspapers headlined the exploits of various teams of skin-divers who removed the hatch in the conning tower and made their way into the submarine, identified as U-853. The divers brought up six life rafts, clipped off the upper eight inches of the periscope for a souvenir, and removed a number of human bones, including one complete skeleton, from the World War II submarine. Plans have been announced for the return of the human remains to Germany, and many questions have arisen concerning the sinking of the U-boat fifteen years ago within sight of Point Judith. The story of that kill is the subject of this article.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE (PDF)

Normandy, Let Us Die to Make Men Free

By James Poplar

During the day spent on the beaches where so many sacrificed without hesitation, we often had French locals come up to us and thank us for the sacrifice of our veterans from the Greatest Generation which will soon be no longer. As they told us time and time again “we are the children that those who died never had and we will never forget how America came to our rescue.” 

As we boarded the bus after a long and emotional day, I could not help but recall the refrain of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Where 100 years before over 360,000 soldiers died to free 4 million fellow Americans from slavery. 

“As he died to make men holy

Let us die to make men free

His truth is marching on” 

I was especially proud to be an American that day – in spite of our flaws we remain a unique nation blessed by our altruism and self-sacrifice – we stand alone among others. Although now we may a nation more divided than united, may God bless and protect America forever the home of the brave and the land of the free.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Alan Shepard Interview

(Academy of Achievement/YouTube)

Jim Lovell Interview

(USNA Alumni Association/YouTube)

This Day in Naval History - 21 July

(Produced by NHHC)