Current inventory of the U.S. Navy can be found at:

Timothy L. Francis
Historian
Naval Historical Center
email address: Francis.Timothy@nhc.navy.mil
voice: (202) 433-6802

The above remarks are my opinions, not those of the U.S. Navy or the
Department of Defense

Fellow Naval History enthusiasts:

This information was forwarded to me and likely is of interest to
the group:

—–usn—–

NAVAL VESSEL REGISTER IS NOW ONLINE

http://www.nvr.navy.mil

The Naval Vessel Register (NVR) is the official inventory of ships and
service craft in the custody of, or titled by, the US Navy. Referred to
by Congress in the statutes of the United States Code, Title 10,
Sections 7304-7308, the NVR is maintained as directed by US Navy
Regulations, Article 0406, of 14 SEP 1990. Vessels are listed in the
NVR when the classification and hull number(s) are assigned to ships and
service craft authorized to be built by the President, or when CNO
requests instatement or reinstatement of vessels as approved by SECNAV.
Once listed, the ship or service craft remains in the NVR throughout its
life as a Navy asset, and afterwards its final disposition is recorded.

The NVR has been maintained and published by NAVSHIPSO since 1962. The
NVR now exists as an electronic document only. It is maintained and
updated weekly. Over 6,500 separate record transactions are processed
annually with each being supported by official documentation. The NVR
includes a current list of ships and service craft on hand, under
construction, converted, loaned/leased and those assigned to the
Military Sealift Command. Ship class, fleet assignment, name, age,
homeport, planning yard, custodian, hull and machinery characteristics,
builder, key construction dates, battle forces, local defense and
miscellaneous support forces, and status conditions are some of the data
elements provided.

This information resides on a DoD interest computer. Important
conditions, restrictions, and disclaimers apply.

NAVSHIPSO
Norfolk Naval Shipyard Det Phila
NAVSEA Shipbuilding Support Office
3751 Island Ave
Phila, PA 19153-3297
215-365-5767 / DSN 443-1991
webMASTER
NSLC PACIFIC
Naval Sea Logistics Center Det Pacific
PO Box 1307
Benicia, CA 94510-4037
510-246-5940 / DSN 350-5940

—–usn—–

**************************
Participate in the most “honor”able of hobbies
Join the Orders and Medals Society of America (OMSA)
http://www.omsa.org

Steve Alvin wrote:

> Interestingly, the ski jump wasn’t knew with the Harrier.
>

Doesn’t this idiot have a spell check? It is `new’, not knew!

>
>
> —
>
> Steve Alvin
> Dept. of Social Sciences
> Illinois Valley Community College
>
> salvin@ocslink.com
>
> “I have snatched my share of joys from the grudging hand of fate
> as I have jogged along, but never has life held for me anything
> quite so entrancing as baseball.”–Clarence Darrow

—

Steve Alvin
Dept. of Social Sciences
Illinois Valley Community College

salvin@ocslink.com

“I have snatched my share of joys from the grudging hand of fate
as I have jogged along, but never has life held for me anything
quite so entrancing as baseball.”–Clarence Darrow

FYI. Note the reference to the USA.

There has been some discussion lately of the Jellicoe Mission and its
implications on the development of the RCN (or perhaps more precisely, the
lack thereof), following the first war. In light of this, I thought some
fellow listers might be interested in having the following 2 publications
brought to their notice. I received copies of both relatively easily a few
years ago, (see below).

1. Report of Admiral of the Fleet, Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa on his Naval
Mission to the Dominion of Canada, Nov-Dec 1919, 44pp, (legal size ).

Chapter Headings: 1) Naval Requirements of Canada, 6pp; 2) Administration,
8pp; 3) Personnel, 7 pp; 4) Discipline, 7pp. (plus an 11-page introduction
by the man Himself).

2. William Tatley, “The Jellicoe Mission to Canada: Canada and Imperial
Naval Defence, 1919-23”, MA thesis, University of Guelph, Ontario, April
1974, 206 pp.

The abstract:

“The Jellicoe mission to Canada from November 1919 to January 1920 was the
first and most impressive post-1918 British initiative to revive pre-1914
plans for a unified imperial naval force. The admiral’s visit was
representative therefore of many political and military trends in
Anglo-Canadian relations, for Britain had long sought dominion involvement
in economic, constitutional, and defence federation schemes.

The Admiralty and Jellicoe were agreed on the need for dominion naval
support to maintain the safety of the Empire with the Royal Navy, against
the USA, Japan, and (mischievous) talk of disarmament. Canada, as Jellicoe
soon discovered, seemed surer of her economic and geographic security than
did Britain, and chose to abstain from an imperial naval commitment. The
dominion had internal problems which precluded such involvement. In
addition, the country was unwilling to subordinate itself entirely to
British leadership, preferring to develop a new international personality.

Jellicoe did leave a blueprint for the development of a distinctive Canadian
navy behind him, although economic stringency and public opinion in Canada
meant the shelving of such plans. The navy was reduced to reserve status
and removed from the political arena it had occupied since 1910. Slow
national growth was then possible. Imperial naval defence remained a
British responsibility and Jellicoe’s report became a forgotten symbol of a
British naval initiative.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Canada & the Concept of Imperial Naval Defence: 1867-1918 (28pp)
2. The Admiral and the Mission, (28pp)
3. A Permanent Policy Postponed, (27pp)
4. Broader Considerations: Imperial Defence & the Imperial Conference 1921,
(29pp)
5. The decision to Disarm, (30pp)
6. Defence by Cooperation: Canadian Naval Defence 1923 (26pp)
7. Conclusion: The Willingness and the Need to Arm, (7pp)

Appendices:

George Foster’s Resolution 1909
The Laurier Resolution, 1909
Occasional Papers
Ministers of Marine and Fisheries and of the Naval Service
Suggested Fleets for Canadian Naval Defence
Jellicoe’s Naval Plans

As mentioned, I easily received the first on inter-library loan. The copy I
received came from the National Defence Headquarters Library in Ottawa,
(which I now think is under the tutelage of the Director of History/NDHQ or
Director of Military Heritage/NDHQ, (I forget what they’re calling it this
month).

I obtained the second one for a relative pittance, from the National Library
of Canada, (in Ottawa, of course) on three microfiches. By the way, the
National Library’s collection of theses is a wonderful — but strangely
often overlooked — source of intell, since many of the works, (each one of
which often represents years of research), never see the light of day after
the author’s formal schooling has been completed. Moreover, I think by “law”
(or at least some sort of universally accepted tradition) a copy of all
theses written in Canada are sent there, once approved by the university
granting the degree. I therefore highly recommend it as a research tool.
Too bad they don’t put them out on CD-ROM instead of bloody microfiche!!
(Oops..let’s not start this one again!)

Cheers,
Glen

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Glen “I-was-a-teenage-fogey” Hodgins

A Medal Collector and Commonwealth/Empire Naval Historian
temporarily imprisoned at:

Her Canadian Majesty’s C/O Po Box 500 (CLMBO)
High Commission for Sri Lanka Station A
6 Gregory’s Road OTTAWA, Ontario, K1N 8T7
(PO Box 1006) Dominion of CANADA
Cinnamon Gardens
Colombo 7, Sri Lanka [still Canada’s OFFICIAL title!]

Fax, (from overseas): 94-1-687-815

I just recently purchased *The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal* by Bob Ballard.
Got it from Edward R. Hamilton Booksellers for $7.95!!

Write to them at Falls Village CT, 06031-5000 (that’s the only address, no
street or box no.) and ask for item # 112364. They don’t take credit cards,
send a check for $10.95 (includes postage).

This is the original hard-bound version, and it is great!

Tom

Tom Robison
Ossian, Indiana
tcrobi@adamswells.com
_|_
–X-X-(ô)-X-X–

Found at Web site:

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/mcpon/readgide.html

QUOTE:
The United States Navy

Naval Heritage/Core Values Reading Guide

The following books comprise the Master Chief Petty Officer of
the Navy’s Naval Heritage/Core Values
Reading Guide as prepared in March 1997. This list is updated annually
as part of the Chief Petty Officer Initiation
Season. The books are available through the Navy Exchange or the Uniform
Center toll-free ordering system.

“A” list: required reading list

The Fighting Liberty Ships — A Memoir by A. A. Hoehling
Inchon to Wonsan: From the Deck of a Destroyer in the Korean War
by James Edwin Alexander
Bluejacket: An Autobiography by Fred J. Buenzle with A. Grove Day
A Sailor’s Log: Recollections of Forty Years of Naval Life by
Rear Adm. Robert D. Evans with introduction
by Benjamin Franklin Cooling
Tin Can Sailor – Life Aboard the USS Sterett, ’39-’45 by C.
Raymond Calhoun
Battleship Sailor by Theodore C. Mason
Brave Ship, Brave Men by Arnold S. Lott
The Fleet the Gods Forgot by W. G. Winslow
The Ghost That Died at Sunda Strait by W. G. Winslow
We Will Stand By You — Serving in the Pawnee, 1942-1945 by
Theodore C. Mason
Crossing the Line: A Bluejacket’s WWII Odyssey by Alvin Kernan
Mother Was A Gunner’s Mate: WWII in the Waves by Josette Dermody
Wingo
Man-of-War Life by Charles Nordhoff
Thunder Below by Adm. Eugene B. Fluckey, USN(Ret.)
Master of Seapower: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King
by Thomas B. Buell, introduction by John
B. Lundstrom
My Fifty Years in the Navy by Adm. Charles E. Clark with
introduction by Jack Sweetman
Raiders of the Deep by Lowell Thomas, introduction by Gary E.
Weir
The Atlantic War Remembered — An Oral History Collection by John
T. Mason, Jr.
The Battle of Cape Esperance — Encounter at Guadalcanal by Capt.
Charles Cook, USN(Ret.)
The Golden Thirteen — Recollections of the First Black Naval
Officers by Paul Stillwell with Colin L. Powell
The Last Patrol by Harry Holmes
Proudly We Served — The Men of USS Mason by Mary Pat Kelly
Raiders from the Sea by John Lodwick
Ultra in the Pacific: How Breaking Japanese Codes and Ciphers
Affected Naval Operations Against Japan by
John Winton
Bull Halsey: A Biography by E. B. Potter
Submarine Diary — The Silent Stalking of Japan by Rear Adm.
Corwin Mendenhall
Devotion to Duty — A Biography of Admiral Clifton A. F. Sprague
by John F. Wukovits
Every Other Day: Letters from the Pacific by George B. Lucas
In Love and War: Revised and Updated by Jim and Sybil Stockdale
Good Night Officially by William M. McBride
Nimitz by E. B. Potter
Ship’s Doctor by Captain Terrence Riley
What a Way to Spend a War: Navy Nurse POWs in the Philippines by
Dorothy Still Danner
Fatal Voyage by Dan Kurzman
Naked Warriors by Cmdr. Frances Douglas Fane and Don Moore
Devil Boats by William Breuer
The Ship That Held the Line by Lisle A. Rose
Tin Can Man by E. J. Jernigan
Iwo by Richard Wheeler
Descent Into Darkness by Cmdr. Edward C. Raymer
Blood on the Sea by Robert Sinclair Parkin
On Watch by Adm. Elmo Zumwalt

“B” List: Reference

Against All Odds: The Battles at Sea, 1591-1949 by Alexander
McKee
American Naval History — An Illustrated Chronology of the U. S.
Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present by
Jack Sweetman
The Book of Navy Songs by The Trident Society
Gray Steel and Black Oil: Fast Tankers and Replenishment at Sea
in the U. S. Navy, 1912-92 by Thomas
Wildenberg
Nautilus: The Story of Man Under the Sea by Roy Davies
Sea Power: A Naval History by E. B. Potter
Sharks of Steel by Steve and Yogi Kaufman
Air Raid: Pearl Harbor! ­ Recollections of a Day of Infamy by
Paul Stillwell
Assault on Normandy — First Person Accounts from the Sea Services
by Paul Stillwell
E-Boat Alert — Defending the Normandy Invasion Fleet by James
Foster Tent
The Fast Carriers — The Forging of an Air Navy by Clark G.
Reynolds
Heroes in Dungarees — The Story of the American Merchant Marines
in WWII by John Bunker
The Little Giants — U. S. Escort Carriers Against Japan by
William T. Youngblood
Unsung Sailors — The Naval Armed Guard in WWII by Justin F.
Gleichauf
The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to
Midway by John B. Lundstrom
The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat
from August to November 1942 by
John B. Lundstrom
Admiral John H. Towers — The Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy by
William F. Trinmble
Admiral William Shepherd Benson — The First Chief of Naval
Operations by Mary Klachko and David F.
Trask
The Magnificent Mitscher by Theodore Taylor
The Rickover Effect — How One Man Made a Difference by Theodore
Rockwell, forward by Adm. James D.
Watkins
Allied Escort Carriers by Kenneth Poolman
At Dawn We Slept by Gordon W. Prange
Prisoners of the Japanese by Gavon Daws
The Two Ocean War by Samuel Eliot Morrison
The Naval Air War, 1939-1945 by Nathan Miller
Victory at Sea — World War II in the Pacific by James F. Dunnigan
and Albert A. Nofi
The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal by Robert D. Ballard
Crisis in the Pacific by Gerald Astor
History of the U. S. Navy, Vol. One, 1775-1941 by Robert W. Love,
Jr.
Clash of the Titans by Walter J. Boyne
The Battle of Leyte Gulf by Thomas J. Cutler
Okinawa — The Last Battle of World War II by Robert Lackie
Normandy by Vice Adm. William P. Mack
War at Sea by Nathan Miller
War Beneath the Sea by Peter Sudfield
The Pacific Campaign: The U. S. – Japanese Naval War, 1941-1945
by Dan van der Vat
Miracle at Midway by Gordon W. Prance
John Paul Jones — America’s Sailor by Clara Ann Simmons
Authors at Sea: Modern American Writers Remember Their Naval
Service by Robert Shenk
Rocks & Shoals: Naval Discipline in the Age of Fighting Sail by
James E. Valle
Fighter Squadron at Guadalcanal by Max Brand
The Unsinkable Fleet: The Politics of U.S. Navy Expansion in
World War II by Joel R. Davidson
Run Silent/Run Deep by Captain Edward L. Beach
The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat with intro by Captain Edward
L. Beach
Decision and Dissent with Halsey at Leyte Gulf by Carl Solberg
The Pacific War Remembered — An Oral History Collection by John
T. Mason, Jr.
PT 105 by Dick Keresey
Red Scorpion — The War Patrols of the USS Rasher by Peter T.
Sasgen
Fighting Squadron — A Sequel to Dive Bomber by Robert A. Winston
The Pirate of Tobruk — A Sailor’s Life on the Seven Seas,
1916-1948 by Alfred B. Palmer with Mary E.
Curtis
Submarine Commander by Paul Schratz
We Pulled Together and Won! Personal Memories of the World War II
Era by Reminisce Books
Feet Wet by Rear Adm. Paul T. Gilchrist
War in the Boats by Captain William J. Ruhe
And I was There by Rear Adm. Edwin T. Layton
Submarine Admiral by Adm. J. J. Galntin
All at Sea by Louis R. Harlany
Slow Dance to Pearl Harbor — A Tin Can Ensign in Prewar America
by Captain William J. Ruhe
Battleships in Action, Vols I & II by H. W. Wilson
The People Navy by Kenneth J. Hagan
Longitude by Dava Sobel
U-Boat Commander by Peter Cremer
Kinkaid of the Seventh Fleet: A Biography of Admiral Thomas C.
Kinkaid, USN by Gerald E. Wheeler

“C” List: Reference

History of U. S. Naval Operations in World War II by Samuel Eliot
Morrison:
Vol. I: The Battle of the Atlantic
Vol. II: Operations in North African Waters
Vol. III: The Rising Sun in the Pacific
Vol. IV: Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions
Vol. V: The Struggle for Guadalcanal
Vol. VI: Breaching the Bismarks Barrier
Vol. VII: Aleutions, Gilberts and Marshalls
Vol. VIII: New Guinea and the Marianas
Vol. IX: Sicily — Salerno — Anzio
Vol. X: The Atlantic Battle Won
Vol. XI: The Invasion of France and Germany
Vol. XII: Leyte
Vol. XIII: The Liberation of the Philippines, Luzon,
Mindinao, the Visayas
Vol. XIV: Victory in the Pacific
Vol. XV: Supplement and General Index

END QUOTE

This is certainly an interesting list for content! I would personally
concur with most of these
books for a history education basis. As might be expected a lot of
these books are available from
Naval Institute Press, and perhaps they should consider picking up
reprint rights to some of those
that aren’t currently carried….as another aside, i see that there are
only about 12 of these that I DON’T have, which makes me feel reasonalby
good about my persoanl library! 🙂

– Brooks

Andrew Toppan found and forwarded to me an interesting web page on the
uncompleted German WWII Carrier GRAF ZEPPELIN. It is interesting in
part because of a couple of previosuly unknown pictures and comments by
Russian sources. :

http://home.inreach.com/rickylaw/zeppelin.html

Which is part of a site dealing with the WWII Kriegsmarine in general:

http://home.inreach.com/rickylaw/kriegsma.html

-Brooks
“Wars not make one great!” – Yoda, in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

Hello everyone!

I just discovered that the Marine Nationale is online as of 27.01.98.

You can check out their site at

http://www.defense.gouv.fr/marine/index.html

and don’t worry, they’ve got both an English and a Spanish edition.

Best regards
Christian Andresen
christian.andresen@stv.uio.no
Oslo, Norway

OBIT: Willy Fiedler, V-1 engineer
Date:
Thu, 29 Jan 1998 12:42:47 -0500
From:
William Carmody

Fiedler died at 89 in Los Altos Hills, California.

He was born in Freudenstadt, Germany, southwest of Stuttgart, where
he
went to study engineering and aeronautical engineering. He became a
test pilot and played a leading role in the development of the V-1.
He
spent 1942 to 1944 at Peenemunde on the Baltic Sea coast, helping
to
test the V-1 missile.

In 1948 he moved to the USA to work on missile development projects
at
the Naval Missile Test Center at Point Mugu, California. These
included work on the Navy’s Loon missile, which was to be launched
from submarines. In 1956, Lockheed hired him, and he worked on the
development of the Polaris ballistic missile. He was particularly
active in the problem of launching ballistic missiles from
submerged
submarines: how to aim them so that they would still be pointing
skyward when they reached the water’s surface.

Bill Carmody carmody@doim6.monmouth.army.mil

I heard this on the news coming home tonight:

The English Govt. is considering granting a posthumous pardon to the
last English woman arrested for practicing witchcraft. She was arrested
in early 1942. It seems that she held a seance in which she is supposed
to have contacted the spirt of a British sailor who claimed he was
killed when the British battleship _Barham_ was torpedoed and sunk in
the Med. The British war-time govt hadn’t announce the sinking yet and
the women was arrested as a security risk and jailed for 18 months!

—

Steve Alvin
Dept. of Social Sciences
Illinois Valley Community College

salvin@ocslink.com

“I have snatched my share of joys from the grudging hand of fate
as I have jogged along, but never has life held for me anything
quite so entrancing as baseball.”–Clarence Darrow