Hill Goodspeed has worked at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, where he now serves as historian and artifact-collection manager, since 1994. A recipient of the 2014 Admiral Arthur W. Radford Award for Excellence in Naval Aviation History and Literature, he is the author or editor of five books and has contributed to two others, including U.S. Naval Aviation (Universe, 2001).
Carl LaVO is the author of four books including Slade Cutter: Submarine Warrior (2003), and The Galloping Ghost: The Extraordinary Life of Submarine Legend Eugene Fluckey (2011), both published by the Naval Institute Press. He recently retired as a managing editor of the Calkins Media chain in the Philadelphia suburbs and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Jamie Malanowski has been an editor at Time, Esquire, and Spy, and was the lead writer for “Disunion,” the New York Times series about the Civil War. He is also the author of And the War Came (Byliner, 2011), about the secession winter of 1860–61. This article is adapted from his new book, Commander Will Cushing, Daredevil Hero of the Civil War, published by W. W. Norton & Company.
James M. Scott is the author of The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines that Battled Japan (Simon & Schuster, 2013) from which his article is adapted. He is also the author of The Attack on the Liberty (Simon & Schuster, 2009), which was named one of 20 Notable Naval Books of 2009 by Proceedings and won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Excellence in Naval Literature. His latest book, Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, will be released in April 2015 by W. W. Norton & Company.
David Curtis Skaggs is a professor emeritus of history at Bowling Green State University. He is the editor of ten books and the author of four others, including Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy (2006) and Thomas Macdonough: Master of Command in the Early U.S. Navy (2003), both published by the Naval Institute Press. He was the 2013 Naval History Author of the Year.
Thomas Wildenberg is an independent historian/scholar specializing in the development of naval aviation and logistics at sea. He has written extensively about the U.S. Navy during the interwar period. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Military History, American Neptune, and Proceedings. He is also the author of three books on U.S. naval history, including All the Factors of Victory: Adm. Joseph Mason Reeves and the Origins of Carrier Air Power (Brassey’s, 2003).