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Attack aircraft carrier USS KITTY HAWK (CVA-63) steams the Pacific Ocean 21 July 1969. Photographed by Photographer's Mate First Class D.B. Wood. (USN 1140842)

Oct. 11, 2022

At approximately 1830 on 12 October 1972, Seaman Apprentice Terry Avinger waited in line to receive his evening meal while serving in the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk (CVA-63). When he approached the white cook serving food, Avinger, a black man, requested two sandwiches, but the cook sharply refused, offering only one. Frustrated by the rebuff,

Sailor W.R. Martin points out details of the Japanese trophy flags painted on the cruiser's pilothouse as a scoreboard of enemy ships claimed sunk in the Battle of Cape Esperance, 11-12 October 1942. The six Japanese ships (two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser and three destroyers) represented in this scoreboard greatly overstates the actual enemy losses, which were one heavy cruiser (Furutaka) and one destroyer (Fubuki) sunk and one heavy cruiser (Aoba) badly damaged. This overclaiming was typical of contemporary night surface actions. Photographed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, soon after Boise arrived there for battle damage repairs in November 1942. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (NHHC 80-G-36296)

Oct. 5, 2022

Variation on a Theme: Groping Blindly in the Dark at Savo Island and Cape Esperance

Low-hanging clouds drifted listlessly across a moonless sky on a tropical midsummer night. The occasional thunderclap stirred the silence and temporarily illuminated the otherwise calm seas that enveloped the Solomon Islands. In the months following the initial July 1942 occupation of Guadalcanal by Japanese forces, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)

Chief of Naval Operations Lieutenant Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt and Mouza Zumwalt (right) attend a luncheon with Commandant of the Marine Corps General Leonard Chapman and Emily Champan (left).

Sept. 16, 2022

When Bud Met Mouza: The Zumwalts' Whirlwind Romance and Lifelong Love

Mouza Coutelais-du-Roche married Lieutenant Elmo Zumwalt Jr. after a three-week whirlwind romance in Shanghai. The challenges she faced adapting to both a new country and life as a Navy spouse inspired her lifelong mission to support Navy families.

USS Constitution at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, c. 1875.
The exterior hull planking above the waterline has been removed exposing the “bed of timber” that was the closely spaced live oak frames of the early U.S. Navy frigates.

Aug. 10, 2022

USS Constitution and the Legacy of Live Oak

"Editor's Note: On May 10, 2022, Naval History and Heritage Command will commemorate the 225th anniversary of the launch of the first of the U.S. Navy's six frigates (United States), which began the new United States Navy. The launch of the frigates is a significant moment in both U.S. Navy and American history, and the U.S. Navy's earliest

Ware Drawings
Record Group 45
Naval Records of the Office of Naval Records and Library, 1691-1945

Aug. 10, 2022

USS Congress Becomes the First U.S. Navy Ship to Visit China, 1819

In 1819, the frigate Congress became the first American warship to visit China. Although the cruise did little to protect American commerce in the Far East, which was the ship’s mission, showing the U.S. flag in distant places made a symbolic impact and foreshadowed the Navy’s future role in the Western Pacific.

Quercus virginiana, St. Simons Island, Georgia

Aug. 3, 2022

“…to procure the most durable wood in the world – the live oak of Georgia…”: Building the New U.S. Navy in the 1790s

"Editor's Note: On May 10, 2022, Naval History and Heritage Command will commemorate the 225th anniversary of the launch of the first of the U.S. Navy's six frigates (United States), which began the new United States Navy. The launch of the frigates is a significant moment in both U.S. Navy and American history, and the U.S. Navy's earliest