Alfred Thayer Mahan once wrote, “The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice.” Building on that precept, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson challenged service members and civilians to study and then write about Sea Service history by launching the annual CNO Naval History Essay Contest in 2017.
Specifically, they were invited to write about a naval history topic and relate how lessons derived from it apply to establishing and maintaining maritime superiority in today’s environment. This year, 182 essays were submitted to the contest—an outstanding turnout.
Under the direction of the Naval History and Heritage Command, the competition is supported by the U.S. Naval Institute, which has executed essay contests since 1879. All judging was conducted in the blind. At least three Institute editors evaluated each submission, and the top six essays in the professional historian category and top eight in the rising historian category were selected. Representatives from the Naval History and Heritage Command, Naval War College, U.S. Naval Academy, Naval Postgraduate School, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, and the Naval Institute’s Naval History Advisory Board served as the final judges.
The first-prize winner in each category receives $5,000; second prize, $2,500; and third prize, $1,500. The top three winners in each category also receive a one-year membership in the Naval Institute and a subscription to Naval History.
This year, Rear Admiral James Goldrick, Royal Australian Navy (Retired), earned first prize in the professional historian category for his essay “Antiaccess for Sea Control: The British Mining Campaign in World War I,” which appears in this issue. Goldrick is no stranger to the Naval Institute. He’s written for Proceedings magazine since 1980, when he was a sub lieutenant, and the Naval Institute Press published his book Before Jutland in 2015 and will be releasing his follow-up, After Jutland, this fall.
Second prize in the professional category goes to Lieutenant Commander Joel Holwitt, U.S. Navy, for “High Velocity Outcomes: People, Not Process.” If the lieutenant commander’s name is familiar, it may be because he was last year’s first-prize winner in the professional category. Frank Hoffman, another frequent Proceedings contributor, earned third prize for his submission, “Sea Power in Great Power Competition: Britain Wins the First Global War.”
The U.S. Navy is well represented among the winners in the rising historian category. Lieutenant Robert E. Swain III earned first prize for “Fly to Fight, Fight to Win: Applying the Lessons Learned from Navy Helicopter Gunships in Vietnam to Expeditionary Rotary-Wing Naval Aviation Today.” A pair of retired Navy flag officers, Vice Admiral James R. Fitzgerald and Rear Admiral Richard F. Pittenger, took second-prize honors for their essay “ASW—Will We Ever Learn?” And Lieutenant G. Creigh Greensmith’s submission, “Achieving Dominance in the Cyber Domain: Lessons from Rickover’s Development of the Nuclear Navy,” earned him third prize. Lieutenant Swain’s first-prize essay will appear in the October issue of Proceedings.
In addition to Goldrick’s essay about mine warfare, this issue includes a second Great War feature—retired Marine Colonel Richard Camp’s article about the 4th Marine Brigade’s assault on Blanc Mont Ridge, “‘Shot to Pieces in the Champagne.’” As he recounts, some of the battle’s most brutal fighting, at least for the 5th Marines, took place after the ridge was seized and the Leathernecks were pushing toward the town of St. Etienne.
World War II is represented by a pair of articles about underappreciated amphibious operations. As the title implies, Craig Symonds’ piece “‘There Ain’t Nuthin’ Like Navy Guns’” focuses on the importance of naval gunfire support during the brief Sicily campaign and the U.S. and British landings at Salerno, Italy. Meanwhile, in “Terror & Triumph at Lingayen Gulf,” James Scott describes the kamikaze onslaught Allied warships faced during General Douglas MacArthur’s return to the main Philippine island of Luzon.
Richard G. Latture
Editor-in-Chief