FLOATING FORTRESS, FLOATING CITY, FLOATING MONUMENT : A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THREE AMERICAN WARSHIP MUSEUMS

This thesis presents three warship museums within the United States as case studies to examine the needs and practices of a unique subset of museum organizations. A museum warship is simultaneously an exhibit, artifact, and facility, requiring significant maintenance and preservation efforts.  In order to understand these organizations, it is necessary to analyze the scope of these museums. This analysis attempts to create a comprehensive list of warship museums worldwide, and to highlight the dominant presence of American Second World War ships in the field. The case studies have been selected based on the number and types of ships preserved by these museums, and the major preservation, exhibition, curatorial, and collection challenges before these museums. This analysis combines naval history, historic preservation, and museum theory to better understand these organizations and the ships they preserve.  Battleship North Carolina oversees its namesake, a ship active only during the Second World War. The North Carolina was saved from potential scrapping in the early 1960s due to public support from the ship's namesake state. It has been a museum ship since 1962, located in Wilmington, North Carolina.  Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum currently maintains the aircraft carrier Yorktown, destroyer Laffey, and submarine Clamagore, and has previously maintained other ships since opening in 1976. All of the museum's current ships were constructed during the Second World War, but had lengthy post-war careers. The museum is the focal point of a larger commercial development project across the Cooper River from Charleston, South Carolina.  USS Lexington Museum On the Bay operates the second aircraft carrier so named. Named in honor of the first carrier, sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942, it served a variety of roles until its decommissioning in 1991. The ship has been exhibited by the museum since 1992 in the City of Corpus Christi, TX, Harbor.  The study finds common practices at all three museum sites, a product of information being informally disseminated through individual communications between organizations. Each museum has demonstrated distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Battleship North Carolina's curatorial practices are the strongest of the three case studies. Patriots Point has struggled to overcome years of poor selection of directors and severe preservation issues, and USS Lexington Museum By the Bay has developed the most comprehensive volunteer program.  M.A

On Contested Shores

Perhaps no prediction has been as consistently made—and as consistently wrong—as the imminent death of amphibious operations. Whatever the changes in warfare and technology, the necessity of amphibious force projection endures, long outliving those who claim its time has passed. Changes in how amphibious operations are conducted, however, are just as consistent. This essential contributed volume arrives at a vital point of transition. These essays highlight both changes and continuities, examining historical amphibious operations as early as the sixteenth century to the near future, describing both lesser-known cases and offering more nuanced views of famous campaigns, such as Gallipoli and Normandy. With the release of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030, this volume gives historians, theorists, and practitioners an opportunity to ground the coming changes in the historical context as they seek to find out what it takes to win on contested shores

VULNERABILITY ANALYSIS OF GUAM’S DEFENSE POSTURE

Since the end of the Second World War, Guam has served as a linchpin of U.S. military power in the Indo-Pacific. As the United States’ westernmost territory in the world, Guam has been lauded as the place where America’s day begins. However, with its strategic importance and abundance of military combat power, Guam may be where America’s next war begins. Following decades of reform and modernization, the People’s Liberation Army presents a significant threat to the preeminence of U.S. military power in the region. This study uses a structured vulnerability analysis based on the principles of risk analysis, reliability engineering, adversarial analysis, and safety engineering to identify Guam’s critical vulnerabilities and formulate recommendations that enhance the territory’s defense posture. This study finds that Guam’s missile defense posture constitutes the island’s most significant vulnerability and recommends that congressional budgetary initiatives must remain focused on enhancing Guam’s missile defense capability and hardening defense infrastructure throughout the Pacific territories. Should modern warfare reach the shores of Guam, the U.S. military will have to fight for Guam before it can fight from it.Outstanding ThesisLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Red Perimeter Defeated: U.S. Naval Supremacy, Competitive Adaptation, and the Third Battle of the Atlantic, 1946-1981

This dissertation examines the long-term military competition between the U.S. and Soviet navies during 1946-81. It investigates the dynamics of naval posture change by integrating insights from military innovation theory with in-depth process tracing, thus providing a much-improved understanding of the Cold War at sea during the most decisive phases of the 'Third Battle of the Atlantic'

Dreamers before the Mast: The History of the Tall Ship Regina Maris

Dreamers before the Mast chronicles the epic story of Regina Maris, a tall ship built, owned, sailed, and loved from 1908 to 2000 by people who had big dreams of ships and the sea — and who made those dreams come true. Each chapter of Dreamers before the Mast recounts the hard work and hair-raising adventures experienced by Regina’s owners, captains, crew members, scientists, and students, often in their own words through extensive interviews and excerpts from diaries and journals, letters, and the ship’s logs. All material is fully documented, and the book includes a complete index and detailed appendices. The dreams Regina helped realize varied widely, and the ship experienced several reincarnations. Launched as a top-sail schooner in 1908, Regina (as she was called until 1966, when her official name was changed to Regina Maris) carried cargo in the Baltic Sea and fished for herring and cod off the Grand Banks. In World War II, she allegedly rescued Jews fleeing the Nazi occupation of Denmark. Re-imagined as a private yacht, she was rebuilt in 1964 and rigged as a barkentine to fulfill her owners’ dreams of rounding Cape Horn and sailing the world’s oceans, inspiring cities and nations to obtain their own tall ships. And, in 1969 she re-traced Captain James Cook\u27s route of discovery to Australia for the bicentennial of that historic voyage, representing the Queen of England and her Royal Navy. Turned into a cruise ship in 1970, she sailed around the Pacific, visiting French Polynesia and Mexico many times and surviving two hurricanes a week apart. In 1976, Regina Maris was once again reincarnated, this time as an oceanographic research vessel. As such, she was instrumental in documenting the “singing” behavior of the humpback whale and cataloguing these whales’ unique fluke patterns, making it possible to document their migration through the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, from the Arctic to the Galapagos and Greenland to the Caribbean. At many points in this varied career, Regina was featured in movies and television shows. She sailed in the tall ship races of 1974 and 1976, serving as a school ship in the earlier race and as a floating classroom for people of all ages during her ORES (Ocean Research and Education Society) days. In 1988, she was sunk by incompetence and raised, then deliberately sunk again in 1991 to avoid a hurricane. Heroic — some say Quixotic — efforts to save her followed, but they finally failed, and in 2002, the ship was destroyed, with only her masts, figurehead, and a few other pieces preserved in a public park in Glen Cove, New York. Even that apparently safe resting place was transient, however, for the park was sold for private development in 2017. At the time Dreamers before the Mast was published, the ship’s figurehead and hydraulic capstan rested in the public works yard in Glen Cove, and the author and other alumni were attempting to find a museum to take the artifacts. Over her long and varied life, Regina Maris had suffered ramming by submarines, devastating fires, mutinies, every kind of wild weather, and multiple dismastings. But in 78 years of sailing, she never lost one of the hundreds of souls pursuing their dreams beneath her tall masts.https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/lca_alumni_books/1000/thumbnail.jp

HM 23: New Interpretations in Naval History

Selected Papers from the Seventeenth McMullen Naval History Symposium Held at the United States Naval Academy, 15–16 September 2011.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-historical-monographs/1022/thumbnail.jp

HM 23: New Interpretations in Naval History

Selected Papers from the Seventeenth McMullen Naval History Symposium Held at the United States Naval Academy, 15–16 September 2011.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-historical-monographs/1022/thumbnail.jp

Appalachia Winter/Spring 2023: Complete Issue

Winter/Spring 2023 - Volume LXXIV, Number 1 - Issue #255. Encounters with Animals: Glimpsing the Soul of Natur

The airborne concept in the South African military, 1960-2000 : strategy versus tactics in small wars

Text in EnglishRestricted files have not been uploadedThe thesis commences by elaborating on the concept of vertical envelopment as a form of military manoeuvre and defining airborne operations as comprising parachute, helicopter and air-landed actions. It goes on to describe strategy and tactics as they apply to the discussion before briefly tracing the development internationally of vertical envelopment and the thinking of the South African military about airborne operations during the Second World War. Events leading up to the decision by the South African military to acquire helicopters and to train paratroopers in 1960 are examined and the early operational employment of helicopters is analysed. The establishment of 1 Parachute Battalion is discussed in the light of the absence of a clear understanding of how it should be employed. Moving on to the commencement of the conflict known as the Southern African Thirty Year War, the issue of strategic versus tactical application of an airborne capability during operations in Namibia, Angola and Rhodesia is defined. Strategic application is then illustrated by specific independent airborne strikes, and the requirement for an airborne brigade to plan and conduct such operations is highlighted. The establishment of 44 Parachute Brigade and the difficulties experienced in its development are reviewed before scrutinising the tactical use of airborne forces in support of other ground forces. The high point in organisation and capability of the airborne forces of the South African Defence Force at the time of the ending of the Thirty Year War is appraised and the unfulfilled potential of the capability is elucidated. Faced with change and uncertainty, the employment of the paratroopers in urban operations during the height of the civil unrest is examined. This is followed by probing the response of the paratrooper organisation to severe budget cuts, enforced reorganisation and relocation, the ending of conscription and integration into the new South African National Defence Force following the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. The thesis concludes with an evaluation of the airborne actions during the incursion by South Africa into Lesotho in 1998 and an assessment of the implications of the loss of a strategic airborne capability.HistoryD. Litt. et Phil. (History