“It is with great sadness that I report another loss in our NHF family—former NHF president Rear Admiral John T. Mitchell who joined our board in 2010 and relieved VADM Bob Dunn as president in 2012, serving in the post for four years. A graduate of the Rice University NROTC program, Mitchell had a successful career as an
In Memory of Jim Hornfischer By David A. Rosenberg, NHF Board Member Naval history and the United States Navy lost a great friend and accomplished practitioner of the historian’s craft on 1 June when James D. Hornfischer lost a hard-fought, year-long battle and succumbed to brain cancer surrounded by his family at his home in
By Tyler Robinson Though I never had the privilege of meeting my great-grandfather, I grew up with stories of Major Lenox R. Lohr’s exploits as a soldier in the First World War and a manager of the Chicago World’s Fair, but most especially as the President of the Museum of Science and Industry. It was
By ADM James Stavridis, USN (Ret.) Originally published in Bloomberg – May 20 2021 With the release of the much-anticipated National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence report, the U.S. must confront an inconvenient truth: America, in the words of co-chairmen Eric Schmidt and Bob Work, “is not prepared to defend or compete in the AI era.” Schmidt, the
By Lt. Cdr. Sean Walsh, USN (Ret.) 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Admiral James Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman is the latest in a genre that stretches back more than a century and perhaps as far back as Homer’s Iliad as has been suggested by Mills and Heck in a 2020 essay on the Modern War Institute
A Statement From the Chairman of the Naval Historical Foundation Today we celebrate the life and mourn the passing of a great American patriot, John W. Warner, the epitome of the Virginia gentleman. Serving as an enlisted Sailor in the Navy during World War II, and then in the Korean War as a Marine Corps officer,
By Staff Historian David F. Winkler, Ph.D. A native of Illinois and graduate of the Naval Academy in the Class of 1894 where he played football and is credited with being the first to wear head protective gear after being warned about consequences of further blows to the cranium, Joseph Mason Reeves was assigned to
Voices of Vietnam, a publication that was the final product of an oral history class led by NHF’s staff historian and 2019-2020 Class of 1957 Chair of Naval Heritage Dr. Dave Winkler, has been printed for limited distribution to the midshipmen who participated in the project, Class of 1957 participants in the project, and to
By Carol Mauer Butler “When I get a letter, my heart takes a very skip and then starts thumping. After you’re finished reading the letter you feel good. You’re at peace with world. You like it and it likes you.” These were the sentiments a WWII navy man expressed in a letter to his mother. Over
By James L. Leuci, MCPO, USN (Ret.) On 24 October 1937, over 2,000 people assembled to witness the dedication of a monument to the first woman enrolled in the United States Naval Reserve Force. Many of the people attending the memorial service were female Navy veterans of World War I–Yeoman (F) Sailors. Twenty years earlier,
Reviewed by Tyler Robinson “In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.”-Carl Von Clausewitz, On War The Shores of Tripoli was named one of the best two-player games of 2020 by New York magazine, and it has recently been favorably reviewed on the website of the Center for
By Dr. David Winkler In the pecking order of naval vessels, replenishment ships ranked far below battleships, cruisers, and other combatants. However, it can be argued that few pairs of American warships authorized by Congress achieved as much historical notoriety as these two hulls authorized in 1908. As part of Special Order 92, signed out
Four years ago this week, USS Enterprise (CVN-65) was decommissioned at Newport News Shipbuilding’s Virginia shipyard. Her unprecedented (for an aircraft carrier) 51 years of active operations included defending America’s interests around the globe during a total of 25 deployments. That shipyard decommissioning ceremony in February 2017 was a celebratory but somber occasion, with just
We are saddened to report the loss of Naval Historical Foundation Board Member, friend, and author, Dr. Jack London. Dr. London passed due to natural causes on Monday. This great American’s life was a beacon of service, integrity and selfless dedication to many causes in support of his beloved Naval Academy, wounded warriors, and all
