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13 June 2023
Welcome back to our National Maritime Historical Society members and friends who share a love for naval history!
We open this week with our best wishes to the Destroyer Escort Sailor Association as they hold their final reunion this weekend in Albany, New York, hosted by the museum ship USS Slater (DE 766) a Cannon-class destroyer escort that spent much of her naval career with the Hellenic navy. As noted last week, the Escort Carrier Sailors and Airmen Association will be having its last gathering in the nation’s capital on 25–26 August.
Be sure to tune in tomorrow night for the Naval Order’s Heritage Night featuring James C. (Chris) Rentfrow, who will provide an overview on plans for a new National Museum of the US Navy. In related news, our feature story is a progress report on the National Museum of the US Coast Guard, which aims to open in 2025.
We salute Chief Petty Officer Bill Norberg, who received special recognition at the recent Battle of Midway Dinner in Arlington, VA. The centenarian, who served on Enterprise (CV 6) through the duration of World War II, received a copy of the Presidential Unit Citation presented to the famed aircraft carrier during World War II. See more about the presentation, conducted by Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa M. Franchetti, below.
Speaking of CV 6, Dr. John R. Satterfield offers a review of The First Enterprize: A Legendary Little Ship with a Storied Name. We also thank Dr. Ingo Heidbrink for his rather quirky review. Read on and you shall see.
For our “In Case You Missed It,” with the centennial of the Navy’s first aircraft carrier coming to Washington, DC, to conduct air operations, we offer a Sea History Today piece posted three years ago that points out Navy flight operations predated the Langley. Enjoy!
Tuesday Tidings is compiled by Dr. David F. Winkler and Jessie Henderson. As always, comments are welcome at nmhs@seahistory.org.
| ITEMS OF IMMEDIATE INTEREST | |
14 June 2023 - Naval Order of the US Heritage Night
Navy Museum Director Dr. James C. Rentfrow on Plans for the New Museum
8–9 PM (EDT)
History Happenings - Upcoming and On-going Events — Naval Order
18 June 2023 - Mare Island Historic Park Speaker Series -- Shackleton’s Voyage (in person)
St. Peter’s Chapel, Mare Island, CA
2 PM (PDT)
Events (mihpf.org)
23 June 2023 - USS Monitor Legacy Program – Lt. John Mercer Brooke Lecture (in person/streaming)
Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, VA
Noon – 1 PM (EDT)
Lt. John Mercer Brooke - The Mariners’ Museum and Park (marinersmuseum.org)
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Coast Guard Museum Update
With tomorrow’s Naval Order Heritage Night chat by Navy Museums Division Director Dr. James C. (Chris) Rentfrow on the Navy’s vision for a new national museum campus to be located on a publicly-accessible site that is being acquired through a property swap arrangement, we can also report progress is being made up in New London on the future Coast Guard Museum.
Last August 17, along the banks of the Thames, the Coast Guard conducted a symbolic “Keel-Laying” for its new museum featuring Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Lee Fagan and numerous local, state, and federal officials. Over the past ten months work proceeded on the project’s first phase that entailed the dismantling of part of a City Pier and installation of a wall to allow for landfill.
With the future museum’s footprint taking shape on the New London waterfront, the National Coast Guard Museum Association has announced bids are now being sought to construct the foundation to support the 80,000-square-foot, six-story museum that is projected to cost $150 million. The company that wins the contract will take on the task of drilling approximately 240 micropiles into the bedrock below to provide needed structural stability for the state-of-the-art facility.
It is anticipated that the micropile installation will take six months. Above-ground construction will take place throughout 2024 to enable a planned museum opening to occur in 2025. Recently recognized at the National Maritime Awards Dinner in Washington, DC, Congressman Joseph Courtney, of Connecticut’s Second District noted the Federal Government’s commitment for support (US Sen. Chris Murphy, chairman of the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, helped to secure $50 million for the museum, increasing the total federal contribution to $70 million) has “turbocharged the private fundraising.”
Read full article>>
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World War II veteran presented Presidential Unit Citation
June 6, 2023
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By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Abigayle Lutz
Coinciding with the 81st anniversary of the Battle of Midway, Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO) Adm. Lisa M. Franchetti presented the Presidential Unit Citation to Chief Petty Officer Bill Norberg, a World War II veteran who served during the Battle of Midway, during a commemoration dinner at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, VA, on 4 June.
Norberg served aboard USS Enterprise (CV-6) during the Battle of Midway as the commanding officer’s phone talker.
“It is truly an honor to be here for the ceremony and being 100 years old, it is great being here tonight,” said Norberg. “I am proud to be a member of that ship and crew, which did so much to bring an end to the Pacific War.”
It has been said that at the heart of any Navy victory is the American sailor, who is the greatest example of sacrifice and service. The Battle of Midway, fought 3–7 June 1942, demonstrates the heroism and courage of sailors throughout a multi-day engagement, whose efforts ultimately blunted the Japanese navy’s striking force and advance across the Pacific.
Read full article>>
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June 25, 2020 — Barges, Balloons, and Barnstormers: The Humble Origins of Today's Aircraft Carriers
Way back in 2002, the radio series This American Life sent a team of reporters to spend a week aboard the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis. The resulting episode, “Somewhere in the Arabian Sea,” was a fascinating glimpse of life aboard the vessel, from the pilots and command staff to the people tasked with supplying the vending machines and washing laundry; from the demands of the job to the logistics of organizing a Super Bowl party. While I confess I had never given much thought to aircraft carriers before, the episode made me think about the complexities of these ships, and how they evolved to serve their purpose.
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Of course, the first vessels to carry “aircraft” were nothing like the ships we are familiar with today. Some people trace their origins back to the Austrian ship SMS Volcano, which carried unmanned hot-air balloons that were released, carrying bombs, to float over Venice in July 1849. In 1861, the Union Army’s Balloon Corps, led by Thaddeus Lowe, rebuilt the coal barge George Washington Parke Custis (depicted at left) to serve as a staging area for gas-filled balloons to be used for reconnaissance and surveilling Confederate troops. The deck of the Custis was essentially cleared to make way for gas generators and a flight deck. The barge towed a balloon, floating at around 1,000 feet, and Lowe observed Confederate troop movements.
When airplanes were introduced, it was perhaps inevitable that their capabilities would be combined with the range of ships for military use. Captain Washington I. Chambers of the US Navy, the “father of naval aviation,” recruited self-taught exhibition pilot Eugene B. Ely (pictured below) to attempt a take-off from the deck of a ship. On 14 November, 1910, Ely flew a Curtiss Pusher aircraft from a wooden platform mounted on the bow of the light cruiser USS Birmingham just off the coast of Norfolk, VA. It was a shaky start, and the plane skipped off of the water, damaging the propeller, but the pilot managed to fly two and a half miles to make a landing on Willoughby Spit. Having proven that a plane could take off from a ship, the next logical step was demonstrating that a plane could safely land on one; on 18 January of 1911, Ely departed from Tanforan Race Track on the San Francisco Peninsula and, much to the delight of the crowd that had gathered onshore to watch, successfully brought his aircraft down on the deck of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania, which had been fitted with a 120-foot platform, ropes and sandbags stretched across the landing surface to halt the plane, and a canvas awning at the end of the platform in case the ropes weren’t enough. Later that afternoon the ship was turned around and Ely flew back to Tanorfan. Ely returned to barnstorming, and died in October in a crash during a performance in Macon, GA; the Navy posthumously recognized his contribution to naval aviation with the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1933.
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NAVAL HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS | |
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Quirky History – Maritime Moments Most History Books Don’t Mention. By John Quirk, Leamington Spa: Fernhurst Books Ltd., www.fernhurstbooks.com (2022)
Reviewed by Ingo Heidbrink, PhD
...In the end, this reviewer needs to admit that he has simply enjoyed the book and Quirk’s ability to look at the maritime past while brushing against the grain of traditional maritime historiography and seriousness of research. Professional maritime history is a serious topic and needs to be taken as such, but sometimes it is simply a good idea to take a step back and to look at the lighter side. Maybe Quirky History is not quirky at all, but just the break required if the everyday work of a maritime historian becomes too serious. Taking your research and your topic seriously is mandatory for any professional scholar, but it helps to recognize that there might be some quirky elements and maybe even to realize that most maritime historians have their quirky moments, even if they might lack the ability to express these thoughts in high-quality cartoons. This reviewer definitely knows that he sometimes has quirky moments, and his mind wonders off to imaginary versions of history and thus did not only enjoy reading the book but also reviewing it. Nevertheless, it is now time for the reviewer to return to serious work and to hope that other colleagues will also find the book useful to pause from historical research and learn about quirky moments in maritime history and to realize that some quirkiness might be a prerequisite for successful maritime history research.
Read full review>>
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The First Enterprize: A Legendary Little Ship with a Storied Name. By Deborah A. Spence, Colorado Springs, CO: 16 Publishing (2022)
Reviewed by John R. Satterfield, DBA
... Enterprize spent the war’s last year in Charleston Harbor, SC, the only American ship of its type to survive the conflict and remain in naval service. In 1815, Lt. Lawrence Kearney took command, sailing with a squadron to the Mediterranean but arriving too late for the brief Second Barbary War. On its return to the US, Enterprize and Kearney, who remained her captain until 1822, conducted anti-piracy patrols around the Caribbean and chased the Lafitte brothers out of Galveston, TX, to Central America. The ship’s last captain, Lt. John Gallagher, commanded for just a few months before losing his ship on a reef in bad weather near Curaçao in July 1823. The wreck caused no casualties, and the crew was exonerated in a hearing.
Author Spencer’s inspiration for this, her first book, came, oddly enough, as much from the TV show Star Trek, featuring the starship Enterprise, not entirely surprising since family members worked for NASA. Her writing is occasionally awkward, but her historical research is very complete, clearly based on thorough reviews of ship’s logs and other surviving documents. She provides detailed biographies of most of the ship’s 21 commanding officers, along with good contextual descriptions of the US Navy’s early history and initial leaders. Her tale is reasonably balanced and includes accounts of the Navy’s mistakes and inadequacies during Enterprize’s service life that had impact on the ship’s performance. The book contains many thumbnail illustrations and maps, along with useful information about the ship’s heritage and the subsequent careers of some of the men who commanded Enterprize. One glaring shortcoming is the absence of any ship’s plans, the originals of which apparently have not survived, although reasonably accurate recreations could have been provided to benefit the reader. Still, The First Enterprize is overall a useful and entertaining volume, worthy of the lucky little ship itself.
Read full review>>
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NAVAL HISTORY BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW | |
George Washington III (SSBN-598)
1959–1986
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George Washington (SSBN-598) underway at sea, 30 June 1960. Copyright Owner: National Archives. | |
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The third US Navy ship named for George Washington (1732–1799), commander in chief of the Continental Army and the first president of the United States.
In addition, six ships have been named Washington in honor of the first president. The first Washington—while never part of the Continental Navy—was a 160-ton schooner named Endeavor, acquired by Gen. Washington in 1775, fitted out and re-rigged as a brigantine, and served in 1775. The second Washington, a row galley, served from 1776–1778. Frigate Washington was launched on 7 August 1776 but never completed, and she was destroyed by fire on 7 May 1778. The third Washington, a lateen-rigged, two-masted galley, also served in 1776. The fourth Washington, a ship-of-the-line, served from 1815–1843. The fifth Washington, a revenue cutter, served from 1833–1837. The sixth Washington, also a revenue cutter, served from 1837–1861.
III
(SSBN-598: displacement 5,600; length 382'; beam 33'; draft 29'; speed 20+ knots; complement 120; armament 16 Polaris A-1 submarine launched ballistic missiles; class George Washington)
The third George Washington (SSBN-598) was laid down on 1 November 1957 at Groton, CT, by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corp.; launched on 9 June 1959; sponsored by Mrs. Ollie R. Anderson, wife of Robert B. Anderson, Secretary of the Treasury, and commissioned on 30 December 1959, Cdr. James B. Osborn (blue crew) and Cdr. John L. From Jr. (gold crew) in command.
Read full article>>
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George Washington (SSBN-598)
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ADDITIONAL FEATURED CONTENT | |
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Tracing the Histories of Naval Guns
by John L. Morris
During my decades-long participation in the antique gun collecting community. I often heard or read “if that old gun could talk….” Eventually I got many of them to talk. An antique gun’s dollar value is usually said to depend upon its rarity, condition, and collector demand. Another important factor to consider is its provenance. For example, George Washington’s pistols are nice, collectible 18th C. flintlock pistols which, without the GW provenance, might bring $14000 for the pair. However with a well-documented GW provenance, they should be worth, currently, $5 million ($ values here are just guesswork to illustrate the point.)
I was introduced to gun tracing by famed California antique gun collector, the late Mr. George Repaire, who ran an antique gun shop in El Cerrito, CA. I visited his shop while on Navy duty in the Bay Area in 1974. He had a few Navy Dahlgren Boat Howitzers in and near his shop, with dates of manufacture ranging from 1850 to 1870. He mentioned in passing that he knew which ships each had served in, and he’d obtained the info from the National Archives. On my next trip to Washington, DC, I visited the Register of Naval Guns (within Record Group 74) in the Archives and examined the several volumes which recorded the manufacture through final disposition of each naval gun, howitzer, or mortar. Since then I’ve used those records, and others, to trace hundreds of US Navy guns. We’re fortunate because the Bureau of Naval Ordnance kept very detailed records on all of its major weapons from about the 1840’s through at least WWI. The US Army Ordnance Department apparently didn’t see a need for preserving similar records on its weapons, or if it did, the records didn’t make it into the National Archives, so tracing US Army weapons is problematic, to put it mildly. Eventually I began receiving frequent requests for tracing and had the most important volumes microfilmed to avoid traveling into Washington DC so often.
Read full article>>
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NAVAL HISTORY CALLS FOR PAPERS | |
UPCOMING NAVAL & MARITIME HISTORY GATHERINGS | |
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16–18 June 2023: Fairwell DESA Reunion, Albany NY
23–24 June: North Carolina Naval History in the Age of Sail and Steam Symposium, Kinston, NC (See here for more details)
25–26 August: Fairwell ECSAA Reunion, Arlington, VA
18–21 September 2023: Historic Naval Ship Association Conference aboard USS Slater
21 September 2023: Navy Memorial Lone Sailor Award Dinner, National Building Museum, Washington, DC
21–22 September 2023: McMullen Naval History Symposium, US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD
9 October: US Naval Institute 150th Celebration
17–22 October 2023: Naval Order of the United States Congress, San Diego
25 October 2023: US Naval Institute Conference – Critical Thinking – Our Greatest Weapon to Winning Tomorrow’s War
| Click here to watch Dr. Michael A. Verney’s presentation of his book: A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic. | PREBLE HALL NAVAL HISTORY PODCAST | |
A naval history podcast from Preble Hall – the United States Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland. Preble Hall will interview historians, practitioners, military personnel, and other experts on a variety of naval history topics from ancient history to more current events.
Click here for the latest episode: 192: Admiral Mike Mullen, Part 11: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Cont)>>
Click here for all Preble Hall Podcasts >>
| NAVAL HISTORY & HERITAGE COMMAND H-GRAMS | |
H-Gram 078: 20 March 2023 >> The Revolt of the Admirals, Ship Renaming
| DRACHINIFEL YOUTUBE CHANNEL | INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NAVAL HISTORY | |
The International Journal of Naval History (IJNH) provides a preeminent forum for works of naval history, researched and written to demonstrable academic standards, with the goal of stimulating and promoting research into naval history and fostering communication among naval historians at an international level. IJNH welcomes any scholarly historical analysis, focused on any period or geographic region, that explores naval power in its national or cultural context. The journal is independent of any institution and operates under the direction of an international editorial board that represents various genres of naval history.
Click here to read the February 2023 edition and archived issues on the IJNH website >>
| SUPPORTING US NAVAL HISTORY & HERITAGE | |
With the 250th anniversary of the US Navy on the horizon, NMHS seeks your support as we plan to honor those who have provided for our maritime security.
Click here to donate today >>
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