US Navy Recruit Training Command - Keel Yearbook (Great Lakes, IL)

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Between the wars the Navy devoted its meager resources and manpower, ships and funds to research and development in aviation and submarine warfare. Stricken at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines in 1941, practically blockaded by German sub- marines operating off our East coast ports, the nation built, in three short years, the most powerful naval force in the history of the world. The indomitable spirit of our carrier dive bomber and torpedo plane pilots turned the tide of the war in the Pacific in the Battle of Midway, June 4th, 1942. From that day on, naval power in the Pacific slowly but surely drove the Japanese imperial forces into their home waters. Powerful Arn- phibious forces, protected alike by carrier air power and our submarine forces, swept the Japanese armies off the Pacific Islands. Our fast carrier task forces destroyed the Japanese Fleets. Possibly the greatest air battle in the naval annals was the Mariannas Turkey Shoot, in june 1944, in which the car- rier pilots of Admiral Marc Mitcher's Task Force 58 and anti- aircraft fire accounted for most of the 346 Japanese planes destroyed. After the war the exploits of our silent service, the men who fought under the sea in our submarines, was finally publicized. Ranging throughout the Pacific and into the very harbors of Japan itself our fighting submarines sank 214 Jap- anese naval vessels f577,626 tonsj and 1,178 merchant vessels 6,053,491 tonsj, a monument to the greatest submarine force in history. During this period the Atlantic Fleet was rapidly breaking the back of the German Navy by sweeping from the sea the greatest submarine menace ever to threaten this nation. Our convoys were supplying the allied armies in Europe and our ships were conducting landings in Sicily, Italy and finally Nor- mandy. The greatest two ocean Navy in the world had played a large part in bringing victory to America and the free world. And this war, like all wars, led to the development of new inventions, new techniques and new weapons conceived by American genius and perfected by men of vision. While industry was being welded into a mighty supply force, our Seabees, under- water demolition teams, amphibious sailors, marines and sup- porting army divisions were being welded into a team that spelled victory at sea. Added to the illustrious naval leaders of this great Navy, King, Nimitz, Halsey, Mitcher, McCain, Spruance, Lockwood, Fletcher, over three million other officers and men also served. The brainwork, the sacrifice, the devotion to duty of genera- tions past and present is the heritage on which we continue to build and improve our Navy. We are bound to the past only by the good that it has provided and the glorious traditions handed down to us. We are linked to the future by our respon- sibility to deliver to it the best we have received and the best we can produce. Victorious over Japan and Germany, there is still no world peace. Our Navy fought again in Korea for three years and the task forces are still spread across the seven seas. From Barry to Bainbridge to Burke the indomitable fighting spirit is the real strength of our naval heritage. AIR DEFENSE PACIFIC TASK FORCE OPERATION, WORLD WAR II. IRON VERSUS WOOD MARCH B, 1862, THE CSS VIRGINIA KEX USS MERRIMACIQ DEFEATS THE USS CUMBERLAND TO USHER IN THE AGE OF STEEL SHIPS.

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QUALIFICATIONS OF THE NAVAI OFIICER IT IS BY NO MEANS enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor. He should be the soul of tact, patience, justice, firmness, and charity. No meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention or be left to pass without its reward, even if the re- ward is only a word of approval. Conversely, he should not be blind to a single fault in any subordinate, though, at the same time, he should be quick and unfailing to distinguish error from malice, thoughtlessness from incompetency, and well meant shortcoming from heedless or stupid blunder. fReproduction of paintings in this section are by courtesy ot the U. S. Naval Academy Museum, the United States Naval Institute, the Naval Photographic Center, Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Electric Boat Company.1 NAVAL HERITAGE oHN PAUL JONES set the pattern for aggressive, resolute fight- ing which has always been the ideal of the U.S. Navy. The heritage of our modern Navy is a vast montage of individual maritime achievements. Whether the ship be wooden, sail, ar- mored, or atom powered, the indomitable spirit of fighting, sea lfaring, American men have made our country the bastion of the free world today. To John Paul Jones went the honor of first hoisting the Stars and Stripes over an American man-of-war, the USS RANGER, of receiving the first national salute in Quiberon Bay on Feb- ruary 14, 1778, from France. In command of the BONHOMME RICHARD he defeated and captured the SERAPIS off Flam- borough Head, giving our Navy its famous fighting words upon an invitation to surrender, I have not yet begun to fight. With such inspiration thousands of American sailors have followed in his wake, making individual courage collectively the spirit of our Navy. Commodore Edward Preble, like John Paul Jones, filled his officers and men with esprit and lighting courage. Some of Preble's boys became the great leaders of the War of 1812, Stephen Decatur, James Lawrence, Thomas Macdonough. Perry swept the British sea power off Lake Erie. Hull and Bainbridge in the CONSTITUTION, along with Decatur in the UNITED STATES, established American naval power on the high seas during the first year of the War of 1812. As our nation grew in stature in the family of nations, so did our naval officers grow in stature as diplomats. Typical of their exploits was Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry's nego- tiations with the Emperor of Japan in 1853-54. Our war between the states developed the same kind of fight- ing men. David Dixon Porter became famous on the Mississippi River. Captain Raphael Semmes in the commerce raider, CSS ALABAMA, alone captured sixty-nine union ships before he was destroyed off Cherbourg, France by Winslow in the USS KEARSAGE. Perhaps the outstanding Civil War naval hero was David Glasgow Farragut Q Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! y, whose fleets enforced the blockade of the Confederacy. One generation of fighting men breeds its successors. Dewey, and Sampson, our naval leaders in the Spanish-American War at the turn of the century, led and bred the naval leaders of our next war. Wilson, Simms, Hart, Taussig, and many others next guided our Navy in the defeat of the German U-boat menace and convoyed our armies safely to France in the war with Germany during 1917 and 1918. THE RETURN OF THE MAYFLOWER. COMMANDER J. K. TAUSSIG, U. S. NAVY, LEADS THE FIRST DIVISION OF DESTROYERS INTO QUEENSTOWN, IRELAND, MAY 4, 1917, TO COMMENCE OUR ANTISUBMARINE WARFARE IN WORLD WAR I.

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