RICHARD G. LATTURE

On Our Scope

By Richard G. Latture, Editor-in-Chief
December 2006
The best history articles, as well as books, are generally based on primary sources-official reports, letters, and interviews, for example. And occasionally, the long hours a historian spends mining dusty ...

Street Fight in Sunda Strait

By James D. Hornfischer
December 2006
During the opening months of the war in the Pacific, the crew of the USS Houston defiantly nicknamed their cruiser the “Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast” for the enemy’s ...

Almost Warships

By Melanie Wiggins
December 2006
Short of men and ships in the early days of World War II, the United States turned to civilians and their watercraft as the first line of defense against German ...

Hero of Lake Erie Assessed

By David Curtis Skaggs
December 2006
In an excerpt from his new Naval Institute Press book, a War of 1812 scholar evaluates Oliver Hazard Perry’s significance to the fledgling U.S. Navy and the nation.

The Destroyer Aviator

By Carl LaVO
December 2006
Navy aviator Bob Schiller wanted to fly from aircraft carriers. The Navy, however, assigned him to fly floatplanes from a cruiser and, in a surprise to him and most everybody ...

A Marine at 90

By Paul Stillwell
December 2006
As an officer candidate, Colonel Gerald Russell, USMC (Ret.), learned from World War I veterans. He’s now passing his knowledge on to midshipmen.

In Contact

December 2006
“Triumph of U.S. Navy Night Fighting” (See T. Hone, pp. 52-59, October 2006 Naval History) Captain Stephen F. Davis Jr., U.S. Navy Mr. Hone has done a great service ...

Naval History News

December 2006
Wreck Likely a German Aircraft Carrier Poland’s Navy announced in late July that it has identified a sunken shipwreck in the Baltic Sea as almost certainly being Nazi Germany’s only ...

A Big-Gun Cruiser Obituary

By A. D. Baker III
December 2006
Shortly after 0800 on 21 August 2006, nearly 58 years after her commissioning, the heavy cruiser Des Moines (CA-134) departed Philadelphia under tow by a Military Sealift Command tug, bound ...

Grumman’s Finest Seaplane

By Norman Polmar, Author, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet
December 2006
Grumman Aircraft is probably best known for its long lineage of outstanding carrier- based fighters. But among the many other fine aircraft produced by the Grumman “iron works” on Long ...

Book Reviews

Reviewed by Ron Benigo, Andrew G. Wilson, Rear Admiral Thomas A. Brooks, U.S. Navy (Retired) & William M. Fowler Jr.
December 2006
The Southern Journey of a Civil War Marine: The Illustrated Note-Book of Henry O. Gusley Edited and annotated by Edward T. Cotham Jr. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006 ...