Naval historian Robert J. Cressman lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. His The Official Chronology of the United States Navy in World War II received a John Lyman Book Award (1999) and his body of work on U.S. naval aviation history was recognized by the Admiral Arthur W. Radford Award (2008). He is currently editor of the on-line Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. 

Articles by Robert Cressman

National Archives

More Lives Than a Cat

By Robert J. Cressman
April 2012
When one needs ships, it is usually too late to build them. In mid-February 1898, as tensions heated the diplomatic climate between the United States and Spain in the wake ...
Lithograph of the steam frigate Missouri burning at Gibraltar

‘An Ornament to the Navy’

By Robert J. Cressman
January 2012
By the flickering light of a globe lantern, Coal-heaver John Sutton, earning his $18 a month (as much as a ship’s cook or a coxswain), entered the starboard-side engineer’s storeroom ...

A Lady in White

By Robert J. Cressman
December 2011
Captain Erik G. Hakansson, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy, stood on the deck of the hospital ship Solace (AH-5) with a movie camera as the morning watch began on Sunday, 7 ...

Farragut’s Forgotten Flagship

By Robert J. Cressman
July 2011
The call of “square-rigger in sight,” standing toward the harbor entrance at Newport, Rhode Island, late one afternoon in December 1901, prompted commotion on the foc’sle of the training ship ...
National Archives

An Experiment Proves Her Mettle in War

By Robert J. Cressman
May 2011
Shortly before Christmas of 1940, on board the heavy cruiser Tuscaloosa (CA-37), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt brooded over a missive from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. An appended table showed ...
Naval History and Heritage Command

One Last Time

By Robert J. Cressman
June 2010
A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, the destroyer USS Preston (DD-795), in company with the guided-missile destroyer Berkeley (DDG-15) and destroyers Maddox (DD-751) and Fechteler (DD-870) ...

Books by Robert Cressman