Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti was on hand to mark the occasion as the winners of the 2024 CNO Naval History Essay Contest, jointly presented by the NHHC and the U.S. Naval Institute, were announced in an awards ceremony at the Naval Institute’s Jack C. Taylor Conference Center in Annapolis in October.
Winners in the Professional Historian Category were:
First Prize: Lieutenant Commander Frederick “Andy” Cichon, USN (Ret.), “Learn from the Fall of the Philippines and Prepare the Third Island Chain”
Second Prize: Sub-Lieutenant Joseph Reilly, Royal Navy, “‘The Carrier Is Dead, Long Live the Carrier’: Historical Lessons on the Exercise of Sea Control”
Winners in the Rising Historian Category were:
First Prize: Commander Chuck Ridgway, USN (Ret.), “From Distant Shores: How the Experience of the Imperial German Navy’s East Asia Squadron Can Help Understand Chinese Overseas Naval Ambitions”
Second Prize: Commander J. Brandon Wilgus, USN (Ret.), “The Shell Crisis: A Lesson from the First World War”
Third Prize: Lieutenant Jack Tribolet, USN, “Mapping the Messaging of Midway: Navigating Navalism in the 21st Century”
Winners in the Midshipmen and Cadets Category were:
First Prize: Midshipman 1/C Nathan Scherry Jr., U.S. Naval Academy, “Lessons from Aviation in the Second Nicaraguan Campaign, 1926–1933”
Second Prize: Ensign Jack Montgomery, USNR, Holy Cross NROTC, “Training, TRAINING, and M-O-R-E T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G: Maintaining Warfighting Proficiency while Implementing Innovation”
Third Prize: 2nd Lt Quentin Zimmer, USMC, “We Mind the Mines: Lessons from the Tanker War for the Marine Corps”
