Through a century and a half, the Navy has virtually ignored the history concealed in its Captains’ Letter Books, its logs, and its voluminous files. True, there have been some researches by those rara aves, the officers who have somehow found time, even amid the technical complexities of the ever more exacting profession, to turn to history. We have had our Mahans and Chadwicks as authors of articles and books. Now and then an interested civilian historian has dipped into the records and brought up valuable information for a work of his own. Documentary source material, covering limited periods, has occasionally been published. In the main, however, not even the valiant efforts and the able pen of Commodore Dudley Knox, so long the lonely but undaunted torch-bearer, have prevented what he himself has termed the “burying of naval history under a mountain of undigested documents.”
Lack of money, of course, has been the chief difficulty to disinterment; an obstacle to be overcome only by the power of persuasion. An example, perhaps not too widely appreciated, is the effort to get the Naval Documents of World War I into print. Commodore Knox had them ready in the early 1920’s but the necessary appropriation was not forthcoming. They were still waiting in 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the White House.
As all the world knows, the President’s long study of naval history had filled him with enthusiasm for the great days of the frigate and the sloop-of-war, the skysail and the carronade. He could do nothing about World War I but he could—and did—persuade Congress to give the necessary funds for publishing the documents on our Quasi- War with France in 1799 and on our battles with the Barbary Corsairs. To be sure, these are also very much naval history and their preservation in available form was highly desirable. Nevertheless, their publication, at that particular time, led to the snap judgment by the ill-informed that “history,” in the Navy, signified nothing but “archives,” and very dusty archives at that. It required a second World War to give History Now its recent impetus.
In the last few years at least something has been accomplished toward razing the “mountains of documents.” Into the towering side of it that represents World War II, a good-sized tunnel has been dug by a working party under a very young Bos’n’s Mate, the Office of Naval History.
This office was created by the Secretary of the Navy in July, 1944. Admiral Edward C. Kalbfus was named as its first Director, with orders
To coordinate the preparation of all histories and narratives of the current wartime activities in the Naval establishment in order to assure adequate coverage to serve present and future needs and effectively to eliminate non-essential and overlapping effort.
To initiate and approve essential new projects, amend existing projects, and take whatever steps arc necessary to obtain the purposes desired.
It is hardly necessary to enumerate the outstanding qualifications of Admiral Kalbfus for the office, with his four stars earned in the Fleet itself, his deep interest in naval history fostered by two terms as President of the Naval War College, and his then current duty as a member of the General Board. For the good of his new assignment, however, these very qualifications made it doubly unfortunate that he should have been appointed, almost at the same moment, to the Pearl Harbor Court of Inquiry. Paramount as this latter duty naturally had to be, it prevented him from giving, during the following six months, more than the most casual time and attention to a Historical Program already more than two years late in getting fully underway. Beyond immediately securing the assignment of Commodore (then Captain) Knox as his Deputy Director, the Admiral could accomplish very little until December.
Fortunately, two important efforts in the direction of history already had been begun. In early 1942, Samuel Eliot Morison, the well-known Professor of American History at Harvard, author of Admiral of the Ocean Sea, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, and of numerous other distinguished works, came to Washington and proposed that he be allowed to write an over-all “shooting history” of the war. Given the immediate approval of President Roosevelt and Secretary of the Navy Knox, he was commissioned a Lieutenant Commander of the Reserve, later advancing through Commander to Captain. The commission has gained him access to very highly classified documents and, even more important, made it possible for him to be present aboard ship as an observer of actual Combat Operations. Moreover, under the flag of the Director, he has had countless opportunities to talk with the highest ranking Commanders of the Fleets and the Task Forces, as well as with a great many of their subordinates in every theater of the naval war. Our own Army and all the Allied services have contributed to his material.
Half a dozen officers, from Commander to Ensign, have been and still are working as Captain Morison’s assistants. One and another of them have also been aboard battleships, destroyers, or LST’s, to get a firsthand look at a battle; to take voluminous notes right under the guns; to follow these later with exhaustive study of the Action Reports; and to prepare a rough draft for final polishing by Captain Morison himself. Meantime a group of cartographers is preparing countless track charts and diagrams to supplement the innumerable photographs.
This monumental work, to be entitled the History of Naval Operations, World War II, will run to about a dozen large volumes and need perhaps three more years for its final completion. The first volume to be published, although not the first in chronology, will deal with North Africa, or “TORCH.” It has already been placed in the hands of the publishers, Little, Brown and Company, and should be available to the public by this time.
The Morison History will be similar to Sir Julian Corbett’s account of the Navy in the last war, in that it is based upon official facts and figures. It will, however, not be an official history in the sense of presenting either the views of the Navy Department or the consensus of naval officers. At the author’s particular request, the opinions expressed, although based upon the facts thus far established, are his own. Where a Flag Officer, a Squadron Commander, or the Captain of an individual ship is directly quoted, the comment will represent what could be seen from one bridge or one beach-head, not a definitive critique of an entire operation. At all events, when the work is finally finished, it should certainly present a picture of the shooting war by a master hand. It should stand as the basic source for all future histories until, say, a hundred years hence, when everything about World War II is known at last, and someone can produce a King's Lieutenants.
The second effort already begun when the Office of Naval History came into existence was on the Administrative side of the Navy’s War. In 1943, Professor Robert Albion, of the History Department, Princeton University, had been engaged as Recorder of Administration. This rather unintelligible title was intended to indicate that he would prepare a study of the Administration of the Navy Department at the beginning of the war and during the many changes that the war imposed.
Because he could give only half of his time, Dr. Albion, by his own wish, did not get into uniform. For all practical purposes, however, he has been regarded as though he were commissioned; like Captain Morison he has been given access to highly classified material and afforded every opportunity to talk to those who know the facts. Special studies of the Navy’s tremendous Procurement Problem and the solutions found for it were early begun under Dr. Albion’s direction. Contracts and the highly-complicated negotiations related to them; material inspections, modifications that experience in the field indicated should be made in specifications, re-negotiation and the like: all these were being covered. To a considerable extent it was the work on which Dr. Albion and his assistants were engaged in 1943 and early 1944 that pointed to the desirability of much wider historical coverage.
So many questions were asked about so much administrative detail. How should the responsibilities of the Secretary of the Navy be divided among his Assistant Secretaries? What relationships were developing between the civilian management of the Navy on one side and its military operation on the other? How were the Bureaus and Offices of the Department going about their huge jobs? What changes and expansions of their staff organizations had already been forced upon them? What other changes would be likely, before the war was won? What was developing in the Naval Districts? It was these questions and endless others like them that had led Secretary Forrestal to see the need for full coverage, and this, after some discussion of the suggestion that a Historical Board be established, in turn led to the designation of Admiral Kalbfus as the Director to whom both Captain Morison and Dr. Albion should report.
At the outset, since there was no precedent for the Office of Naval History, its policy and its plan had to be cut from new cloth. When the Pearl Harbor Inquiry was finished, the Director’s first decision was that it was not he and his office, as co-ordinators, but the Navy itself that must write the history as well as make it. That is to say, since the facts must be the basis of any history, it was the Commands and the Commanders who must gather those facts. An office in the Department could under no circumstances collect them; the “field” must do it.
It was equally plain that the field was too busy learning how to fight the war and then fighting it, to find very much time to write about it. Already, the absolutely vital paperwork, even reduced as it had been by the suspension of innumerable peacetime letters and reports, was getting between the gun- sights and the targets. Nevertheless, since Commanders must necessarily carry the responsibility, the Director’s first step was to get this made clear through a directive from the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, addressed to the Heads of Offices and the Bureau Chiefs, to the Commandants of Naval Districts and to the Commanders of all Forces having administrative offices, not forgetting the Commandants of the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard. Obviously this included, for practical purposes, all hands in the Naval Establishment, afloat as well as ashore. Fixing the responsibility by his directive, Admiral King left the details to Circular Letters to be issued by the Director himself.
The first of these letters established the mission of the Office of Naval History as the co-ordination of complete historical coverage:
(1) In order that responsible officials of the future might avoid the mistakes of the current war and take advantage of its successes;
(2) In order that all possible source material might be available for the making of studies; and
(3) In order that histories might be written when adequate perspective permitted.
A fourth purpose fully recognized, but for the moment regarded as secondary in importance, was that of informing the general public. From the start it was a tenet of the Director’s policy that between History and Public Relations or, as it was later known, Public Information, there could be little more than a bowing acquaintance. The latter office had long been a going concern; its task was to provide headlines for tomorrow’s papers; to get the Fourth Estate where it could, under war conditions, be permitted to go; to screen out of the casualty lists and other reports from the Seven Seas what might conceivably contain help and comfort for the enemy and to put the remainder into the extra on the street corner. History, by its very definition as “the candle of the past by which we may peer into the future,” had little or nothing to do with these matters of the passing hour. It followed that the Director of the Office of Naval History immediately divorced himself and the Office from any connection with books put together for publication while the war was still being fought. Valuable as these works were for their specific purpose, they were not, in the proper sense, intended really to be history. As the Director expressed the matter, to offer them as history would be analogous to constructing the box-score of a ball game after seeing the first inning and then going home.
To elucidate the Director’s plan of procedure, this first Circular Letter began by recognizing that “Operation” and “Administration” frequently overlap, and followed this by suggesting a line of demarcation between the two for historical purposes. As to the former, no combatant ship was expected to produce anything in addition to her regularly submitted War Diaries and Action Reports. Beyond these she was asked only to co-operate as fully as possible, when occasion arose, with Captain Morison or his assistants. This, however, was with one proviso. Any Commander lucky enough to have an officer in a position to write a special account of an operation was urged to have him write it. Not only would such an account supplement, from another viewpoint, Captain Morison’s narrative; it might also, if none of Captain Morison’s group was aboard, serve as the only eye-witness account.
In connection with this same combatant ship there was, on the other hand, a considerable administrative story back of her getting to her station and being able adequately to play her part when she got there. According to the Circular Letter, the office behind her should prepare a narrative covering the many problems that must be solved, the plans to be made, and the logistic directives to be executed before that ship could steam into action ready to fight. This would be true whether such an “office” or Headquarters were located ashore or aboard another ship, moored in a safe anchorage.
To emphasize this distinction between the two types of coverage, the Director designated Captain Morison as Assistant Director of Operational History; Dr. Albion as Assistant Director of Administrative History. Organizing into these two divisions served the additional purpose of clarifying the routine functioning of the Office of Naval History. Essentially the effect was to strengthen Captain Morison’s hand and to widen very greatly the task of Dr. Albion as general supervisor of narratives to be prepared by all Administrative Commands.
As outlined by the Director, these narratives were to be prepared “as of the top echelon.” That is, they were to present the problems that confronted Commanders and Commandants, demanding solution in order that the Command might do its full share in winning the war. They were to discuss the solutions tried and abandoned as well as those that proved successful. They were to go into the staff expansions, the training, transportation, and shipping difficulties, and the policy changes found necessary as the war developed. They were to be liberally annotated with references to letters, dispatches, telephone calls, and conferences. Where a Command was located in an Allied country, or co-operating with Allied Forces, the problems of these international relations were also to be discussed. In short, what was sought was an objective, factual account of each administrative Command, so filled with information that some future Commander, ordered years hence to re-establish the Command on a war footing, could read the narrative and learn the fundamentals of his new assignment. If he wanted to see the pertinent documents, he would have a list of them before his eyes. Days and weeks might thus be saved in re-establishing any given wartime activity.
Criticism was regarded as an important element, provided this was temperate and made by someone in a position to make it. A responsible Chief of Staff, District Supply Officer, or Fleet Medical Officer, for example, might readily be able to increase the value of the narrative by a constructive comment on “the better way to do it, next time,” as shown by what actually resulted from some particular policy.
What was wanted was not a mere record of achievement. It went without telling that everyone—or nearly everyone—was doing the best he could, but the narratives were no more intended to puff up personalities than to blow them down. For these reasons, officers on this duty were to be known, not as “Historians” but as “Historical Officers.” Their task was to be that of getting the facts, allowing any necessary evaluation to come later. What they thus prepared as facts were to be forwarded, in duplicate typescript, with each Commander’s written approval.
As might be expected, this rather ambitious plan immediately raised the question of PERSONNEL. A fine idea to get such narratives, but who would prepare them? The ideal, suggested the Circular Letter, would be the assignment of as many officers as necessary from each Command. Already attached to it, they should have first-hand knowledge and an acquaintance with members of the Staff who knew both background and development. They should be able to secure, from subordinate activities and in as much detail as necessary, the material to fill in the broad picture.
It was clear, however, that not all Commands could find, on their own rosters, the names of qualified officers who could be spared from other duties. “Qualified” must mean a background of experience in historical research and writing, added to some ability in examining documents with a sense of the relative importance of each, and such officers could hardly be ubiquitous. Definitely disinclined to choose any officers, lest they should appear to be “planted,” the Director did, however, propose to help any shorthanded Command by “attempting to locate suitable officers and to procure their assignment by the Bureau of Naval Personnel.”
As a result of this offer, there were many calls for this help and the office soon made the interesting discovery that officers of the desired qualifications were at a distinct premium.
Not that they were few in number. Actually, a “run” by International Business Machine revealed plenty that were “not less than 30 years old, at least lieutenants in rank and holders of Ph.D. or M.A. degrees in History.” The chief difficulty lay in the assignments they already had—particularly one that the Director flatly refused to disturb, duty on a combatant ship. An astonishing number were in Naval Intelligence, on the presumably well-founded assumption that an intellectual head implied a foot fitted to the intelligence gum-shoe. Again, many of the exact type wanted were found bent over code-boxes and cryptograms, bored by routine but very difficult indeed to secure by “ex-communication.” Nevertheless, let those who insist that BuPers has no soul, and does not want to help, take note of this: When the Director did ask for any officer it was only rarely, and then for reasons too cogent to be questioned, that “Officer Distribution,” given a little time, failed to produce the man wanted. There were some disappointing delays in supplying Commands overseas. Now and then an officer assigned was later snatched by an importunate Flag Officer for his staff. Once or twice the choice fell short of what was expected of him and had to be replaced. In the great majority of cases, however, although from the standpoint of the complete coverage sought they were too late, they were not too little.
Most of the officers thus obtained were given a short time in Washington to discuss the whole plan with Dr. Albion and to meet other officers already at work on the narratives of the Bureaus and Offices of the Department. This last was important because the Farber Board had not yet re-examined such complicated relationships as those of District Commandants to Bureaus supervising activities located within the Districts. If unnecessary duplication was to be avoided, an important question was “What will be whose pidgin?” As finally agreed, certain large activities in various Districts, such as Training Centers, Supply Depots, etc., were selected for type and covered by Historical Officers sent out from the Bureaus concerned. District Historical Officers, in their narratives, touched upon these activities only as they presented actual administrative problems to the Commandants having military responsibility.
Classification of the narratives was left for the future. Since their first purpose was to inform “responsible officials,” they could be held as tightly as might be desirable. Thereafter, as source material, they could be made available as rapidly as the years after the war might make this advisable. In any case they were not to be available to the public until two years after hostilities and, in toto, they would probably never be published. For these reasons and because of the highly classified documents involved, Historical Officers were not to make addresses, write articles “on the side,” talk to the press, or become in any way involved in Public Relations.
This was the framework of the effort. In practice these general policies have required very little modification under Rear Admiral Vincent Murphy who relieved Admiral Kalbfus in December, 1945. By that time, the “target date” for completion of the narratives had been named as six months after V-J Day, or about 15 February, 1946. Many commands were able to meet this date. Many others, due to lateness in getting started and to headlong demobilization, have “lost on points” and, even at this writing, are not quite finished. With these, however, it should be merely a matter of a few more weeks.
Narratives, as they are received, are examined by Dr. Albion and his assistants. Occasionally, where informed officers, detached long ago from Commands, chance to be now on duty in or near Washington, it has been possible to draw important additional material from them in the form of notes or monographs which Historical Officers were too late to get. In some instances, where there has been a little too much about “Commander Snatzblock, after sleepless nights, dauntlessly braving ruthless higher authority to get what he must have,” it has been possible to get this modified toward objectivity. On the principle that too much is better than too little, some narratives have made port with a convoy of appendices much larger than themselves. In one or two cases these appendices are practically “museum pieces” in that they represent the only complete files in existence, and this is fully recognized. Such material is not discarded, but instead of being bound with the narratives, it is preserved in files specifically identified with the Command involved, to serve, when or if wanted, as secondary source material.
Bound volumes of typescript and appendices now number roughly 200 and there will probably be another 75. Originally, the binding was in duplicate, the carbon copies being returned to the originating offices. Al- ready, however, there have been so many requests from various activities for the loan of narratives of other Commands, that, where available, three copies have been bound. Appendices and enlightening photographs are bound, where practicable, with the narratives they concern; otherwise, they form supplementary, cross-referenced volumes bound in a different colored buckram.
Quite frequently parts of the narratives have been wanted by present Commanders for wider distribution among their subordinates. In these instances multigraph copies have been made by the Command concerned, bound in boards by the Office of Naval History with a legend similar to that on the buckram volumes, and numbered serially to meet any present security requirements. This is in line with the fundamental purpose of making information on World War II available to the Navy as promptly and widely as possible.
A vast amount of such information is at hand in accessible, digestible form. Some parts of it are more shipshape than other parts and, to a considerable extent, this quality has depended upon the Commanders concerned. Where they and their Chiefs of Staff saw the mission of the Historical Officers as Admiral Kalbfus outlined it, they have backed the enterprise, opened the files, made discussion of the problems a “must” with their staffs, and actually read the finished product with their own constructively critical eyes. Inevitably, some have taken the “Who will ever read that stuff?” position. A very few apparently looked upon the Historical Officers assigned them as “white mice” from the Navy Department, as Bobby Burns’ “chiel amang ye, takin’ notes.” Another few have wrapped themselves in the boat-cloaks of the Silent Service whose history must be all deeds with no words. Nevertheless, there is a vast amount of information which he who operates anything from a barrage balloon to a battleship, from a barracks to a Bureau, may read to his professional advantage. Moreover, in case he has been unable for some years to spare time for this reading, he will find a glossary of abbreviations to tell him what was meant in 1944 by SLEDGE HAMMER or CHASTITY. With what is before him, he will be able to prepare a paper on WAVES procurement or on the training of Port Directors for Island Bases.
To mention Port Directors is to recall a typical example of what these Administrative narratives are. Rear Admiral Martin Metcalf, when told by the Commander in Chief to “organize Convoy and Routing,” could find nothing ready to hand that would tell him how Convoy and Routing was organized in World War I. Months of searching dead files might do it but only hours were available. The Admiral, having discovered that he “had to make it up as we went along,” resolved that this should never happen again. Accordingly, the narrative, as he finally approved it, tells when and why and how. It describes the “command line” telephones that had to be leased, the special decoding staff that had to be established, the innumerable graphs, charts, cardfiles, manuals, “Gyro” Instructions, “Mercos,” and “snakes” found necessary to keep minute-by-minute touch with the vast fleet of merchantmen and escorts in every Allied port and on every Allied sea. Even the names of individuals are included, in order that some junior lieutenant of this war, recalled for another one from the Vice Presidency of a corporation, may immediately be made a Commander at the head of the very section in which he got his experience. As Admiral Metcalf finally said: “Anyone with that book in hand could establish Convoy and Routing in three hours!”
At this writing, the torch of Commodore Knox has been handed on to Captain John 13. Heffernan. The Captain has been made both Director of Naval History and Officer in Charge, Naval Records and Library. Since he thus wears two caps, the one under the Secretary of the Navy and the other under the Chief of Naval Operations, it appears not unlikely that the two offices will eventually be made one, to be known by some more easily understood title such as Naval Records and History, and to be left under the Chief of Naval Operations.
The new Director has long been associated with the historical side. He thrice served as an instructor in that department at the Naval Academy and had done some historical writing. Given a reasonable amount of money and a fair share of personnel, he should produce many valuable studies by members of the Service and by civilians, from the material now being assembled.
Immediate plans contemplate several such studies. Flanking Dr. Albion’s book on Navy Department Administration, certain over-all monographs on Logistics and on Procurement are already completed, while others are in preparation. These will be published by the Princeton University Press, thus complementing Captain Morison’s History of Naval Operations with an Administrative picture of the Navy, both open to public view.
This is not quite all. About a year ago the Secretary of the Navy, with Admirals King and Kalbfus, decided that a group of books, also for general publication, should cover such subjects as Naval Aviation, the Chaplains, the Armed Guard, the PT Boats, the Mine Force, and the Submarines—all Forces whose work was always underway but rarely reached the front pages of the press. The first of these—or the first volume of two— has already been published by Harper’s, and the others will follow as they are finished.
If these various efforts do not result in establishing History as a familiar “point of departure” on the Navy’s charts, what will?