Oral Histories

This is a rare volume in the Naval Institute oral history collection in that it deals primarily with a staff corps officer.

This memoir concentrates on Admiral Withington's career in the field of naval ordnance. After graduation from the Naval Academy in 1923, he was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) and then was involved in fitting out the new battleship West Virginia (BB-48); he would serve in her for five ...

Rear Admiral Joseph Muse, U.S. Navy (Reitired) served in the Memphis, operating in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Asiatic fleets, then in the USS Tutuila (PR-4) on the Yangtze Patrol. In 1940, while gunnery officer in the heavy cruiser USS Northampton (CA-26), did experimental work in use of radar in ...

After graduation from the Naval Academy in 1932, Wylie served in the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) under Captain Chester Nimitz. He had duty in the Naval Academy’s executive department and was in the commissioning crews of three destroyers: USS Reid (DD-369), USS Bristol (DD-453), and USS Fletcher (DD-445). The ...

This is a lively, candid, informative memoir from the officer who served as Commandant of the Coast Guard from 1986 to 1990. After growing up in Indiana and Florida, he went to prep school in Washington, D.C., shortly after World War II and graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in ...

Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt was one of the best-known U.S. naval officers from the second half of the 20th century. As Chief of Naval Operations from 1970 to 1974 he made sweeping changes. In his memoir On Watch, published in 1976, the admiral discussed the CNO years in great ...

Launched in September 1982 — one month after the opening interviews conducted for the oral history of Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., Naval Institute oral historian Paul Stillwell embarked on a project to augment Zumwalt’s memoir with those of some of the officers who had served under him. The highly ...