The Journal

Tag Search: navy

The Challenges of Command: The Royal Navy’s Executive Branch Officers, 1880-1919

The Challenges of Command surveys the executive branch officer corps of the Royal Navy from the last part of the Nineteenth Century through the close of the First World War. In the process, Robert Davison focuses his analysis on the broader societal and technological setting of the period that acted upon the Royal Navy and … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

Water Scarcity, Conflict, and the U.S. Navy

Contents: Historical Precedent Scope of the Problem Yemen: A Case Study Prescription A Role for the Navy Appendix A: Maps Bibliography Christian Perkins 55th Annual Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference Domestic Category Prize Winner Historical Precedent Since its inception, the United States has made protection of its international interests a priority through transoceanic power projection. … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

Strategic Logic of the American “Pivot to the Pacific”

William Kyle University of Mary Washington, Class of 2013 Five years of Obama administration foreign policy are now in the history books as we continue to move beyond the Global War on Terror era. While the jury is still out regarding the ultimate impact of this administration’s re-direction of American foreign policy, its initiatives are … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

Beneath the Waves: The Life and Navy of CAPT. Edward L. Beach Jr.

Edward L. Beach, Jr. had an interesting and varied career in the U.S. Navy. A submarine officer, he received three of the four highest awards for valor of his service. (The only one he did not receive was the Medal of Honor). Beach was the commanding officer of four submarines, and one surface ship. He … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

Ships and Shipbuilders: Pioneers of Design and Construction

Published to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, Ships and Shipbuilders is a reference book that offers a fresh look at giants in the field of ship design and construction, while introducing new subjects for discussion. The work is arranged chronologically, ranging from Archimedes of Syracuse, continuing through the late-twentieth … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

“A” Force: The Origins of British Deception during the Second World War

The role of deception in Allied military operations has been surveyed in several previous monographs, but the contribution of “A” Force, the primary British organization responsible for this side of military operations in the Mediterranean theatre, has heretofore lacked its own accounting. Enter Whitney Bendeck to fill the void and who ably recounts how “A” … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

Strategy and War Planning in the British Navy, 1887-1918

First off, this is a very handsomely-produced book from The Boydell Press (or Boydell & Brewer, based in Suffolk, England). Victorian-born maritime painter William Lionel Wyllie’s “Manoeuvres” graces the cover; a lesser known watercolour next to frequent re-prints of the “First Battle Cruiser Squadron of Grand Fleet 1915”-oil painting, for example, or his epic 42-foot … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

Far China Station: The U.S. Navy in Asian Waters, 1800-1898

Far China Station: The U.S. Navy in Asian Waters, 1800-1898 is a 2013 paperback reprint edition of the late Robert Erwin Johnson’s 1979 work. Although the US naval presence in Asia dates back to the voyage of the frigate Essex to Java in 1800, Johnson’s narrative commences with the establishment of the East Indian Squadron … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

Billy Mitchell’s War with the Navy: The Interwar Rivalry over Air Power

Now that the centennial of the First World War is upon us, it is time for an impartial, scholarly work on Billy Mitchell. Thomas Wildenberg’s latest offering argues that Mitchell was neither the founder of the U.S. Air Force, nor the creator of strategic bombing. Rather, Mitchell’s “claim to fame” was sinking the former German … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article

View from the Quarterdeck

Over the summer during a visit to France I came upon a moving reminder of the importance of a journal dedicated to encouraging academic scholarship in the field of international naval history.  Just several hundred meters inland from the imposing U. S. Navy Monument in Normandy dedicated by the Naval Order of the United States, … CONTINUE READING ❯
Article