U.S. Navy Archives

Created solely from the artist’s imagination, this chromolithograph was issued to meet the Ameri- can public’s demand for revenge against Spain for the destruction of the USS Maine.

U.S. Navy

The USS Maine

By VanLoan Naisawald

Darkness had settled over the harbor, the lights along the shoreline casting a faint glow on the murky harbor water. Read more

Covered with oil and soaking wet, these men head for shore. The Coolidge can be seen in the background (left).

U.S. Navy

The Coolidge Goes Down

By Kevin Hymel

It was supposed to be a routine delivery of soldiers to the battlefields of Guadalcanal—but nothing in war is ever routine. Read more

U.S. Navy

Famous Marines: Smedley Butler

By Edward L. Bimberg

The annals of the United States Marine Corps are filled with the names of mavericks known not only for their fighting skills, but for their offbeat personalities as well. Read more

Marines of Company D, 3rd Platoon, rush to take defensive positions around Con Thien as they encounter heavy North Vietnamese gunfire.

U.S. Navy

Con Thien: Hell on the Hill of Angels

By Al Hemingway

Lieutenant General Lewis Walt was not a happy man. The burly III Marine Amphibious Force commander had just been ordered by Commanding General William C. Read more

With their Ka-Bar fighting knives at their sides, U.S. Marines sit atop a pile of spent shells and provide cover for comrades moving inland on Iwo Jima.

U.S. Navy

The Marine Corps’ Ka-Bar Fighting Knife

By Mike Haskew

When Private Clarence Garrett of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, United States Marine Corps, clung to the loose black volcanic sand on the sloping beach of Iwo Jima on Feburary 19, 1945, he probably had no idea that his photograph was being taken. Read more

U.S. Navy

Saipan: A Crucial Foothold in the Marianas

By John Wukovits

On June 10, 1944, as his troop transport churned through the Pacific toward the Japanese-held island of Saipan, Pharmacist’s Mate First Class Stan Bowen wrote a letter to his sweetheart, Marge McCann. Read more

U.S. Navy

Why Kaiser Wilhelm II Almost Attacked America’s East Coast

By Frank Zedeck

In the latter part of the 19th century, Germany’s young Kaiser, Wilhelm II, was anxious to play Weltpolitik (global politics) and expand his country’s influence beyond the borders of Europe, where Germany was already an acknowledged power player. Read more

U.S. Navy

The USS Utah: The Memorial & The Pearl Harbor Paradox

By Richard Klobuchar

Very few among the throngs of visitors to Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu are aware of an anomaly, but it definitely exists in the case of the USS Utah. Read more

Searchlights and flares cut through the darkness during the night action at Sunda Strait in February 1942, in this painting by John Hamilton. The Japanese bested the Allies there, taking control of the Java Sea.

U.S. Navy

Working on the Railway of Death: A POW’s Story

By Eric Niderost

When Howard Brooks joined the United States Navy in 1939, the 20-year-old farm boy from Tennessee had no idea that he was going to experience one of the most harrowing adventures of World War II. Read more

An Iraqi tank crashes forward through the Hawizeh swamp region near the village of Al Azayr on March 18, 1985. By then, the Iran-Iraq War had been going on for over four years.

U.S. Navy

New Borders, Old Enemies, The Iran-Iraq War

By John Walker

The world awoke to ominous news on September 22, 1980. Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein had launched a massive armored and air attack across the Iraq-Iran border. Read more

U.S. Navy

Hell’s Own Cesspool: Okinawa in WWII

By John Walker

On Easter morning, April 1, 1945, the Pacific island of Okinawa trembled beneath an earthshaking bombardment from American combat aircraft overhead and ships steaming offshore in preparation for an amphibious landing of unprecedented magnitude. Read more

Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki did not contest the landings at Attu in May 1943; instead, he ordered his 2,300 troops to establish strong positions in the mountains from which they could fire down on the Americans. Pictured are U.S. troops at Massacre Bay.

U.S. Navy

Fog of War in the Aleutians

By Colonel James W. Hammond, Jr.

For decades Americans have been spoiled by the instant coverage of war in the media. Read more

U.S. Navy

Seaplane Striking Force

By William H. Langenberg

The first few years after World War II were challenging ones for the U.S. Navy. Massive demobilization of personnel and rapid scrapping or retirement of ships created internal disruptions. Read more

Bannerman Castle, in the Hudson River, sits in ruins today, 50 miles north of New York City.

U.S. Navy

Pollepel Island: Private Fortress on the Hudson

By Dorraine Fisher

In central New York, 50 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River, is a small spit of land known as Bannerman Island. Read more

U.S. Navy

Commodore John Barry: Naval Hero of the American Revolution

By Neil Cosgrove

Most histories of the American Revolution give the fledgling Patriot navy only one hero: John Paul Jones. While not begrudging Jones’s recognition, it seems unfair to represent the Continental Navy with a single fighting captain. Read more

U.S. Navy

The Battle of Iwo Jima: Red Sun, Black Sand

By John Walker

No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Read more

An American Army officer fires his Colt 1892 revolver at charging Filipino insurgents in this painting by Frederick Remington.

U.S. Navy

Savage Model 1907: Rival of the Colt M1911

By Steve Lilley

In the 1939 movie The Real Glory, elite U.S. Army officers arrive in the southern Philippines to mold the Filipinos into a military force to defend their villages against marauding Moro tribesmen. Read more

Three crews were lost during tests of the Horace L. Hunley, shown in a painting by Conrad Wise Chapman.

U.S. Navy

Evolution of the Submarine

By John Protasio

The concept of a ship that could submerge beneath the water and then resurface dates back as far as the late 1400s, when Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have found a method for a ship to remain submerged for a protracted period of time. Read more

U.S. Navy

Controversial Allied Escort Carriers were Versatile Weapons

By Michael Hull

Ungainly, slow, and lacking armor, the escort carriers of the American and British navies were the versatile, unsung workhorses of the second half of World War II. Read more