Oral Histories

Admiral Adair graduated from the Naval Academy in the class of 1926. Following assignments on board the USS Mississippi (BB-41), USS Toucey (DD-282), USS Blakeley (DD-150), and USS Patoka (AO-9), he studied communications at the Naval Postgraduate School. From 1935 to 1938 he served as radio officer on the staffs ...

This oral history traces the early career of a future Chief of Naval Operations from Naval Academy graduation in 1927 through command of Carrier Division Six in the Mediterranean in 1958–59. Along the way, he discusses flight training, aviation duty in light cruisers and patrol planes, and service in aircraft ...

A 1918 graduate of the Naval Academy, Admiral Ansel served on convoy escort duty in the closing months of World War I. He had a variety of duties in the interwar years, including study of amphibious warfare, service on board the cruiser USS Milwaukee (CL-5) and at the Naval Academy ...

Arbor was born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1914, one of 12 children. After the U.S. entry into World War II, he enlisted in the Navy in 1942 — shortly before he would have been drafted into the Army. He went through recruit training at the all-black Camp Robert Smalls ...

Arthur attended Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), on a Navy ROTC scholarship. Graduating in 1957, he entered flight training and in 1958 earned his wings as a naval aviator. During the Vietnam War, he completed 514 combat missions, many as Commanding Officer of Attack Squadron 164 on board the attack aircraft ...

Admiral Austin, who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1924, provides a relatively brief description of his junior officer years, which contained a fair amount of submarine duty. From 1937–1940, he was press officer in the Navy Department, then went to the U.S. Embassy, as special naval observer in London ...

Chief Badders, who enlisted during World War I, got a taste of battleship and aviation duty before being brought into diving and salvaging work in the mid-1920s. In his oral history he describes the woeful status of the Navy's diving capabilities at the time, and he was in on the ...

Mike Bak served as a quartermaster in the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Franks (DD-554) from 1943 to 1946. He is representative of an entire generation of enlisted men who grew up during the Depression and whose only active duty was during World War II and the immediate postwar period. He ...

This is one of the few interviews of a civilian in the Naval Institute collection, but it is one of considerable value to historians because of Mr. Baldwin's long association with the service during his time as military correspondent and editor for The New York Times. Mr. Baldwin was graduated ...

Barnaby was the first person in the United States to earn a soaring license. He began developing gliders not long after the pioneering work of Orville and Wilbur Wright. The memoir of his naval service focuses primarily on his glider experiences, including his achievement as the first person to descend ...

After a boyhood in Oberlin, Ohio, Barnes attended Oberlin College in the same town, graduating in 1936. He excelled in sports, particularly football and track, in both high school and college. He worked for five years as an athletic coach at Livingstone College in North Carolina, later enlisted in the ...

Admiral Bauernschmidt was a 1922 Naval Academy graduate who spent the first ten years of his commissioned service as a line officer and then switched reluctantly to the Supply Corps to avoid being retired for color blindness. He thus brought a line officer's perspective and feeling for the prerogatives of ...