Howard Chandler based this depiction of the February 1945 Iwo Jima flag raising on Joe Rosenthal's award-winning photo. Our 60th anniversary coverage of Iwo includes The Entire Island Is a Shrine,
The High Cost of Faulty Intel, and 'What to Do with Naval History.'

In this Aurthur Beaumont painting from the U.S. Naval Academy collection, a sailing ship lags behind the USS Connecticut, an image of the naval transformation discussed in several articles in this issue, including Transformation a Century Ago.

Bob Larkin's illustration for the cover of ZERO! By Masatake Okumiya and Jiro Horikoshi with Martin Caidin, the definitive account of Japan's greatest fighter in World War II. Says the illustrator: "I used models for the aircraft carrier and the Zero. I shot the models at my photographer's studio in Manhattan. We ran a cable through the length of the airplane. After the photos . . . the whole painting didn't take more than two days to finish.","
Features

You've Got V-Mail
By Thomas Wildenberg
The Brits have brought us many things—the angled deck, the optical landing system—but V-mail ranks right near the top. Their microfilm system enabled millions of World War II letters to be shipped by airmail

U.S. Navy Owes T.B.M. Mason
By Commander Randy C. Balano, U.S. Naval Reserve
Theodorus Mason helped bring the Navy out of the dark ages when he pushed for the establishment of the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1882.

Depth Charges, Rods, and Spuds!
By Glenn M. Hardin and James W. Grace
Did the USS O'Bannon sink a Japanese submarine with potatoes? Well, maybe . . . but they also used some higher-explosive ordnance.

Bob Larkin: Artist of War
By Dwight Jon Zimmerman
Few artists put more pizzazz into combat cover art than Larkin, who painted dramatic action, while working to tight deadlines.

Salaam Aleikum (Peace Be With You)
Commander Tyrone G. Martin, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Whatever it failed to do, the Barbary War was the incubator of the U.S. Navy.

Naval Base 13: A Crossroads of History
By Manuela Guill
Sounds like an unlucky number, but this base in the Azores left a legacy for naval aviation.

Departments

Looking Back
In Contact
Historic Fleets
Historic Aircraft
Naval History News
The Sail Locker
Book Reviews
Museum Report

As a U.S. battleship pounds shore positions, troops descend cargo nets into LCVPs, or Higgins boats, during the 9 January 1945 invasion of Luzon. James Turnbull's painting is courtesy of the Naval Historical Center. Our coverage of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II begins on page 20 with Richard B. Frank's [The Amphibious Revolution] analysis of how U.S. amphibious developments led to victory.

As the 74-gun Redoutable (left) exchanges broadsides with HMS Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar, sharpshooters high in the French ships fighting top fire down on enemy officers. One of their victims was Britain's most famous admiral, Horatio Lord Nelson. This issue features a trio of articles related to Trafalgar in commemoration of the battle's 200th anniversary.

Advancing under cover of a gas attack, Marines capture a German machine-gun nest during the grueling, nearly three-week battle for Belleau Wood. Artist Tom Lovell is most famous as a Western artist, but he served in the Marine Corps as a staff sergeant during World War II, executing a series of historical paintings, including this one.