Murray Dear, a retired New Zealand banker, regularly contributes articles to New Zealand and Australian naval and nautical magazines. His essay titled “The Japanese Submarine Offensive May/June 1942” was awarded second prize in the professional category of the Navy League of Australia’s 2014 Annual Maritime Essay Competition and will be published in a future issue of the Navy League’s magazine The Navy. He is the author of Two Hits and a Miss (RNZN Museum, 1995).
Gregory J. Martin is currently the Assistant Director for Histories and Archives at the Naval History and Heritage Command, where he directs the reference, research, and publication activities of 20 historians and manages the operations of the Navy Archives and the Navy Department Library. He has published articles on the critical value of history in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine and the Naval Historical Foundation’s Pull Together.
Williamson Murray, senior fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses and professor emeritus of history at the Ohio State University, is the author or coauthor of numerous works, most recently Successful Strategies: Triumphing in War and Peace from Antiquity to the Present and The Iran-Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History, both published by Cambridge University Press in 2014.
Vincent P. O’Hara is a naval historian and the author or editor of five books published by the Naval Institute Press: The German Fleet at War (2004), The U.S. Navy Against the Axis (2007), The Struggle for the Middle Sea (2009), On Seas Contested (2010), and To Crown the Waves (2013). His work has also appeared in many periodicals and annuals. O’Hara holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., and an accomplished historian of naval and military history, intelligence matters, and international affairs. He holds a PhD in political science from Columbia University. His books include Normandy Crucible: The Decisive Battle that Shaped World War II in Europe (Penguin/Citadel, 2011) and most recently The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy, and Presidential Power (University of Texas Press, 2013).
James M. Scott is the author of The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines that Battled Japan (Simon & Schuster, 2013). His book The Attack on the Liberty (Simon & Schuster, 2009) 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 article is adapted from his latest book, Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (April 2015, W. W. Norton & Company).
Mercy Mei Tangredi is 11 years old and a sixth grader at Coronado Middle School in Coronado, California. In addition to writing essays on history, Mercy enjoys computers, swimming, sailing, and performing in musicals. Both of her parents were U.S. naval officers, with her mother, Lieutenant Commander Deborah Mariya, serving as a Navy chaplain.