Military History

Reviewed by Capt. Richard Dick, USN (Ret.) Crash Boat is a remarkable memoir in several ways. The story of an Army Air Forces (AAF) 63-foot crash boat, P-399 Sea Horse (an unofficial nickname), in the Pacific during the latter half of World War II, it was written in a cooperative effort between the skipper, Earl McCandlish, and the son of his chief mate, MSGT George L. Jepson. The authors’ crisp style, eye for color and detail, and sense of common humanity make the book a pleasure to read and highlight an aspect of the war—inshore air-sea rescue in the Pacific—about which little has been published. McCandlish narrates the book from his initial assignment to cras…

Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb, Ph.D. Mrs. Smoot is an intelligence historian who is especially interested in 20th-century cryptology and communication and has published in Cryptologia, Federal History Journal, and Intelligence and National Security; she retired from the Center for Cryptologic History (CCH) of the National Security Agency in 2017. She is also the author of the forthcoming CCH monograph From the Ground Up: American Cryptology during World War I, and a frequent lecturer at the Cryptologic History Symposia, including the May 12, 2022, meeting where she presented “The Case for Parker Hitt as the Father of American Military Cryptology.” In October 2007…

Reviewed by CDR Brian Emory, USN Chief Warrant Officer Kevin P. Gilheany has done a wonderful job delivering a memoir of his service in the Coast Guard. His writing style is easy to read and always engaging in a book that’s can be completed in one sitting or over a weekend. His story begins in his youth where he developed two key goals that would stay him throughout his life. The first happens while watching the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade near Fifth Avenue in New York City. It was there that he fell in love with the sound of bag pipes and dreamed of being able to play them someday. The second event happened during the Bicentennial Celebration in 1976 when his m…

Reviewed by Lt Col Geoffrey R. Brasse, U.S. Air Force Authors frequently engage in military history storytelling through eloquent discussions about battles, outcomes, victories, and defeats. These stories often focus on the personalities of the military leaders, with few details about those participating in the conflict. Former foreign correspondent and corporate writer Robin Knight, in his book Leaders: Profiles in Courage and Bravery in War and Peace 1917-2020, focuses on individual contributions to war history from a single educational source, The Nautical College, Pangbourne in Berkshire County, England. Founded in 1917 to improve cadet training for service in the…

By Barrett Tillman, Osprey (2022) Reviewed by: Capt. Chuck Good, USN (Ret.) Much ink has been spilled over the years on how wars begin, and almost as much on the treaties and negotiations which formally signal their end and dictate their terms. At Dawn We Slept and The Guns of August remain classics on how things start. As to how the end is marked, thousands of pages have been compiled on the great peace treaties: Versailles, Vienna, Paris. But few authors and scholars choose to examine the implementation of these pieces of paper – how the killing actually stops “in the trenches” while conflicts still rage. The classic of this underrepresented genre is a litera…

By David F. Winkler, Ph.D. Staff Historian Today marks the centennial of the first “Navy Day” existence. With the belief that a naval arms race had been a leading cause for World War I, general public sentiment supported President Warren G. Harding’s call in June 1921 to convene a Washington Naval Arms Conference. As documented in Ryan Wadle’s book Selling Sea Power, Navy leaders felt betrayed by the national leadership that had convened and approved of the outcome of the conference that curbed new battleship construction and invoked tonnage limits on other ship classes. Thus, they orchestrated through the Navy League of the United States a celebration that would be h…

to our NHF board member, then-Secretary of the Navy, John F. Lehman. View the full webinar top-gun-annual-leighton-lecture/”>HERE. The post Blog first appeared on Naval Historical Foundation. View the full article

http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1934980226&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=navalhistofou-20&ServiceVersion=20070822http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=navalhistofou-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1934980226 By Del Staecker, Cable Publishing, Brule, WI, (2009). Reviewed by Charles H. Bogart The author is the son of Irvin H. Staecker who served on board the Lady Gangster from 1941 to 1945. The Lady Gangster was the crew’s name for USS Fuller (APA 6). The ship’s nickname developed from the fact that many of the ship’s first crew were naval reservists from Chicago, Illinois. Fuller started life in 1919 as …

The NHF Five Star Mess Night beyond the Fight Top in the Navy Museum With Covid restrictions finally lifted, the Naval Historical Foundation hosted its third annual Mess Night on Saturday, November 5 at the National Museum of the United States Navy. As with previous Five Star Mess Nights, the event was built around a theme and this year’s centennial of U.S. naval aircraft carriers provided the appropriate occasion for the event. Although the USS Langley (CV 1) had been placed in commission in March of 1922, it was not until the autumn of that year that the converted collier got underway to conduct the first launches and traps of “aeroplanes” from Langley’s “flying deck…

By Richard L. Wright, Xlibris (2022) Reviewed By: Michael Romero, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Following the end of the American Revolution, the fledgling United States immediately found itself in dire financial straits. With no funds available to maintain them, the handful of surviving Continental Navy vessels were sold, and the service disbanded. The ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788 empowered Congress “To provide and maintain a Navy,” but what exactly does that process entail? Captain Richard Wright’s To Provide and Maintain a Navy: 1775-1945 shows how that question has been answered from the time of the U.S. Navy’s founding through the end o…

By Michael W. Shelton, Morley, Missouri: Acclaim Press, (2022). Reviewed by John E. Fahey, Ph.D. Rear Admiral (ret) Michael W. Shelton took an unusual path to the Navy. In West Point Admiral: Leadership Lessons from Four Decades of Military Service he recounts his time at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and Seabee assignments ranging from Vietnam to the Pentagon. The book grew in part from an essay Shelton wrote for Dan Rice’s West Point Leadership: Profiles of Courage and heavily emphasizes how to develop effective leadership, “based on ethical decision-making, mutual respect, shared risk, and empathy for the troops (10).” His career from Wes…

Reviewed by Ed Calouro Most histories of World War II at sea rightly focus on the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany. After all, these nations’ navies did the bulk of the fighting. The French, Italian, and other fleets generally receive short shrift. John Jordan and Robert Dumas have shifted the spotlight in their reissued French Battleships, 1922-1956. Originally published in 2009, the 2020 release is a high quality, superior stock paperback, the type readers expect from Seaforth Publishing. This is a first-rate history of the four modern fast capital ships of the Marine Nationale and is a superb presentation of the Dunkerque– and Richelieu-class ba…

On December 7, 1999, the Naval Historical Foundation hosted a colloquium at the U.S. Navy Memorial to discuss the question of accountability for the tragic losses suffered 58 years prior. Join us as we revisit this issue ahead of the 80th anniversary of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. This webinar features an introduction from former Naval Flight Officer Ward Carroll, after which former General Counsel of the Navy Steven S. Honigman will provide an overview of the numerous investigations and subsequent efforts to exonerate the Pacific Fleet commander at the time—Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Former colloquium presenters David Alan Rosenberg, and Randy Papadopou…

http://www.navyhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/DSC_5315-300x200.jpgNHF Executive Director Captain Charles T. Creekman, USN (Ret), and Tonya Simpson from the Navy Department Library pose with one of the recently acquired Afghan war books The Naval Historical Foundation is pleased to announce the successful acquisition of three vintage 19th century books for the Navy Department Library. If you recall in November, NHF made an appeal, called “Bucks for Books,” to raise funds for the acquisition of these books for the Library. A number of generous donors stepped forward, and over $2200 was raised. Three books (one of which is a two-volume set) were acquired by NHF, and…

http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1934980226&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=navalhistofou-20&ServiceVersion=20070822http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=navalhistofou-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1934980226 By Del Staecker, Cable Publishing, Brule, WI, (2009). Reviewed by Charles H. Bogart The author is the son of Irvin H. Staecker who served on board the Lady Gangster from 1941 to 1945. The Lady Gangster was the crew’s name for USS Fuller (APA 6). The ship’s nickname developed from the fact that many of the ship’s first crew were naval reservists from Chicago, Illinois. Fuller started life in 1919 as …

With some considerations of AI use in wargaming: https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/2025/07/29/wargaming-is-having-its-moneyball-moment/

http://www.navyhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DSC_6693-300x200.jpgADM James Holloway, USN (Ret) tells the story of Operation Lion’s Den The Naval Historical Foundation 2012 Annual Meeting was held on Saturday, 23 June, and featured the debut of a brand new exhibit for the Cold War Gallery. Admiral James Holloway, USN (Ret), christened the new exhibit with a riveting firsthand account of the 1972 battle in Haiphong Harbor that is memorialized in the new “Into the Lion’s Den” exhibit. The meeting began with the vote for a new President, RADM John T. Mitchell, USN (Ret). RADM Mitchell succeeds VADM Robert Dunn, USN (Ret), who served in the position for 14 years and…

http://www.navyhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/potomacfever-205x300.jpgBy J. William Middendorf II, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2011), 213 pages. Reviewed by Captain Roger F. Jones, USN (Ret) J. William Middendorf II was an undergraduate at Harvard when World War II began; he soon signed up for the Navy V-12 program and then shifted to NROTC (which took him to Holy Cross). He received his degree – and commission – and was called to active duty in mid-l945, as the war was winding down. A year later, after a scary voyage on an LCS from Shanghai to San Francisco, Middendorf was mustered out, completed his Harvard education, and then embarked on a long and …

By Pam Ribbey, Washington, DC: Opus Self-Publishing, Politics and Prose Bookstore (2022) Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb, Ph.D. This self-published booklet is, in the main, a biography of Pam Ribbey’s grandfather, focuses on her own research and discussions with him on his is role before, during, and immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Capt. Charles Hamilton Maddox, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1909, served as a United States naval officer and was a veteran of both World Wars. He had also attended the Harvard Graduate School of Applied Science and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Captain Maddox retired in 1946 and passed away …

By Pam Ribbey, Opus (2022) Rebuttal Review By Capt. J.R. Reddig, USN (Ret.) I read a review of this book and wanted to respond. By way of background, I served in three wars in uniform. Three that were declared, anyway. Others were undeclared, like the war in the Navy about communications intelligence. The issues were stark, and play out today in the review you published. Who owned the management of the radio intercept system that collected it? Who provided authoritative analysis of the material that was collected? I joined in 1977, when the lines had been drawn. SIGINT collection had been consolidated at NSA, and the old and sometimes bitter struggle betwe…