100 Fun Facts About Navy

The US Navy's birthday marks a 1775 vote by Congress to arm two vessels for what mission?

Intercepting British supply ships: the 13 October 1775 vote sent them after transports of arms. Congress sold off that first navy's last ship in 1785, yet the modern Navy dates itself from it.

Which captain fought HMS Serapis from the Bonhomme Richard in 1779 and is called 'Father of the American Navy'?

John Paul Jones is said to have answered a call to surrender with 'I have not yet begun to fight', then captured Serapis and sailed away in her as his own ship sank.

USS Constitution became 'Old Ironsides' by capturing which British frigate in 1812?

HMS Guerriere's shot glanced off Constitution's hull, and a sailor is said to have shouted that her sides were made of iron.

USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship afloat, is berthed in which city?

Boston built her as well as berthing her: she was launched there in 1797, and in 2012 she sailed under her own power to mark the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

Who led the 1804 night raid that burned a captured American frigate in Tripoli harbor?

Stephen Decatur sailed in aboard Intrepid, a ketch he had captured from Tripoli, burned the frigate so the enemy could never use her, and was promoted to captain at 25.

The Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia was rebuilt from the hulk of which burned Union steam frigate?

USS Merrimack's old name stuck: the 1862 duel with the Union's Monitor is popularly remembered as the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, though the Confederates had renamed her.

Who ordered the 16-battleship 'Great White Fleet' to sail around the world between 1907 and 1909?

Theodore Roosevelt ordered the voyage; the hulls wore the Navy's white peacetime paint with gilded scrollwork on the bows, which gave the fleet its nickname.

Which commander of Japan's Combined Fleet planned the Pearl Harbor attack?

Isoroku Yamamoto hoped a knockout blow would let Japan seize territory and then negotiate peace, but all three of the US Pacific Fleet's carriers were away from the base that day.

Which battleship, where 1,177 died at Pearl Harbor, still lies beneath a memorial built across it?

USS Arizona sank when a bomb detonated one of her magazines; her surviving crewmen were later allowed to have their ashes placed inside the wreck by Navy divers.

To confirm Japan's target, US codebreakers had Midway falsely radio that it was short of what?

Fresh water: Japan duly reported that 'AF' was running short of it, confirming the code name, and the ambush that followed sank four Japanese carriers.

Which US carrier, patched up in days after the Coral Sea, was the only American flattop lost at Midway?

USS Yorktown was expected to need three months in a yard, so Japanese planners counted her out; Pearl Harbor workers had her back at sea in about three days.

Asked where the April 1942 Doolittle raiders had launched from, FDR joked they came from which fictional place?

Shangri-La is the hidden Tibetan valley of the novel Lost Horizon; the bombers had really flown off the carrier Hornet, and the Navy later named a new carrier after the joke.

The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on 2 September 1945 on the deck of which battleship?

USS Missouri carried the name of President Truman's home state, and his daughter Margaret had christened her in 1944, when he was a senator.

USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, made history in August 1958 by doing what?

Passing submerged beneath the North Pole meant 1,830 miles under the Arctic ice from Alaska; Eisenhower had ordered the feat as an answer to the Soviet launch of Sputnik.

Which officer, who supervised the building of USS Nautilus, is known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy"?

Hyman Rickover personally interviewed every officer who wanted to serve on a nuclear ship, tens of thousands in all, and was forced to retire in 1982 after 63 years in uniform.

Which carrier, commissioned in 1961, was the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier?

USS Enterprise ran on eight reactors, each standing in for one boiler of an oil-fired carrier, and cost so much that the five sister ships planned for her class were cancelled.

Which Navy flying unit took its name from a New York nightclub that its pilots saw advertised in The New Yorker?

Blue Angels: the Navy formed the team in 1946 to keep the public interested in naval aviation and lift morale after the war, and a pilot found the name in a nightclub advertisement.

Which jet did the Navy's flight demonstration team adopt for its 2021 show season?

The F/A-18 Super Hornet replaced the older Hornets the team had flown since 1986; each show jet stays in the fleet inventory and can be returned to combat duty within 72 hours.

The first two Navy SEAL teams were commissioned in January of which year?

Team One went to Coronado, California and Team Two to Little Creek, Virginia; both grew out of the WWII-era Underwater Demolition Teams.

What does the acronym SEAL stand for in 'Navy SEALs'?

Sea, Air, and Land are the three environments the teams work in; a trainee who wants to quit their selection course has to ring a brass bell hung in the compound.

Which Secretary of the Navy founded the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845 and gave his name to its giant dormitory?

George Bancroft founded it without asking Congress, which had long refused to create a naval school: he simply ordered midshipmen to an old Army post, Fort Severn, to 'wait for orders'.

What is the greased obelisk Naval Academy plebes climb at the end of their first year called?

Herndon Monument is slathered in about 50 pounds of vegetable shortening; the plebes build a human pyramid to swap the 'Dixie cup' sailor hat on top for an upperclassman's cap.

What is the Naval Academy's live mascot named, adopted after Navy first beat Army in football in 1890?

Navy adopted the goat as its mascot in 1890, the year it beat Army in their very first football meeting.

The 'Navy Hymn', written by William Whiting in 1860, has what title?

Eternal Father, Strong to Save became a Navy fixture after 1879, when the Naval Academy's choirmaster began closing every Sunday service with it.

The annual Army–Navy football game, first played in 1890, is most often held in which neutral city?

Philadelphia sits roughly halfway between West Point and Annapolis, which is why it has hosted most of the games as a neutral site.

TOPGUN was established in 1969 at which California naval air station?

NAS Miramar hosted the school the Navy set up after a 1968 study of why its air-to-air missiles were failing over Vietnam; the school moved to Nevada in 1996.

The Navy's Seabees take their name from the initials of what?

Construction Battalion: the Navy formed the units after Pearl Harbor because civilian builders who resisted an attack could be executed as guerrillas under international law.

Alongside 'We build, we fight', which two-word slogan did the Seabees famously adopt as their motto?

Can Do suited men recruited for experience rather than youth: in the early days of the war the average Seabee was 37 years old.

Which California city staged a 1935 Fleet Week alongside the exposition it was hosting in Balboa Park?

San Diego's 1935 gathering, timed for its California Pacific International Exposition, is often counted as the first Fleet Week; New York's famous version began only in the 1980s.

Which admiral, killed at Trafalgar in 1805, signalled 'England expects that every man will do his duty'?

Horatio Nelson was shot as he paced the deck at the height of the battle, and his body was sent home preserved in a cask of brandy.

Which 104-gun ship of the line, in dry dock at Portsmouth since 1922, is the world's oldest commissioned warship?

HMS Victory spent almost a century as a harbour ship before she was moved into dry dock and repaired; since 2012 she has been the flagship of the First Sea Lord.

Who commanded the Spanish Armada that sailed against England in 1588?

The Duke of Medina Sidonia took over when the veteran Santa Cruz died months before sailing; he wrote to Philip II pleading inexperience at sea and a tendency to seasickness.

On the night of 7–8 August 1588 the English broke up the Armada's anchorage off Calais by sending in what?

Fireships did it: eight blazing vessels drifted in on wind and tide, and Spanish captains cut their anchors to escape, breaking up the formation before the next day's battle off Gravelines.

Which Japanese admiral annihilated Russia's Second Pacific Squadron at Tsushima in 1905?

Tōgō Heihachirō's fleet sank or captured almost every major Russian warship while losing only three torpedo boats, and Russia accepted a peace treaty within months.

The Russian fleet's attack on British trawlers, mistaken for Japanese warships, is named for which North Sea bank?

Dogger Bank: the nervous Russians, on their way to fight Japan, sank a Hull trawler and killed two fishermen; Britain came close to war before Russia paid compensation.

In May 1941 the German battleship Bismarck destroyed which British battlecruiser in the Denmark Strait?

HMS Hood blew up and sank in about three minutes, leaving three survivors from a crew of 1,418; the Royal Navy hunted Bismarck down and sank her three days later.

As of 2024, which country's navy did the Pentagon rate the world's largest, with over 370 ships and submarines?

China's navy has passed the US Navy in hull numbers: the Pentagon counted over 370 ships and submarines in 2024, against roughly 292 in the American fleet.

USS Triton's 1960 submerged trip around the world followed the route of which explorer's expedition?

Ferdinand Magellan's expedition was the first around the world, so Triton retraced its track; the voyage was meant to raise American prestige before a 1960 summit.

Who were the two men aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste in the Challenger Deep in 1960?

Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh felt an outer window pane crack on the way down, shaking the whole craft, yet they carried on and spent twenty minutes on the sea floor.

What does the prefix 'USS' before the name of a commissioned US Navy vessel stand for?

United States Ship became the single official prefix under a 1907 executive order that ended a muddle of styles; a vessel carries it only while she is in commission.

Aboard a US Navy ship, the 'goat locker' is the mess and sleeping area reserved for whom?

Chief petty officers are said to owe the name to sailing days, when the ship's goat was kept in their quarters; by tradition everyone else, the captain included, asks permission to enter.

The eagle above the chevrons on a Navy enlisted rating badge is nicknamed what bird?

Crow is what sailors call the perched eagle, a nickname said to come from how the dark bird looks against a white uniform; the badge took its present form in 1894.

David Farragut's famous 'Damn the torpedoes' is tied to which 1864 battle?

Mobile Bay: Farragut is said to have shouted it after a mine, then called a torpedo, sank the ironclad leading his line; he took his wooden ships through the minefield anyway and won the bay.

Which Texas-born fleet admiral led the US Pacific Fleet in WWII and gave his name to a class of supercarriers?

Chester Nimitz was court-martialed and reprimanded as a young ensign for running a destroyer aground, yet he was the man picked to take over the fleet after Pearl Harbor.

USS Indianapolis, sunk in July 1945, had just delivered components of which weapon to Tinian?

Little Boy's parts reached Tinian on 26 July; four days later a submarine sank the cruiser, and because nobody reported her overdue, the survivors drifted for days before being spotted.

Which US Navy spy ship, seized by North Korea in 1968, is now a museum in Pyongyang?

USS Pueblo's 82 surviving crewmen were held for 11 months; in staged propaganda photos they raised their middle fingers and told the guards it was a Hawaiian good-luck sign.

Which Japanese battleship class, the heaviest ever built, mounted nine 18.1-inch guns?

Yamato, the lead ship, sailed for Okinawa in April 1945 without enough air cover and was sunk by American carrier planes; her sister Musashi had been sunk from the air too.

Which Virginia city is home to the world's largest naval station?

Norfolk's base stands on the grounds of the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, whose naval display so impressed the Navy that it took over the site in 1917.

Whom did Congress appoint the Continental Navy's first commander-in-chief in December 1775?

Esek Hopkins led the fleet's first operation, a raid on Nassau in the Bahamas that seized badly needed munitions, yet Congress censured him only five months later.

Who commanded Britain's Grand Fleet at Jutland in 1916?

John Jellicoe was, in Churchill's words, the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon, which is why he handled the fleet so cautiously.

Which future president commanded PT-109 when a Japanese destroyer cut the torpedo boat in two in 1943?

John F. Kennedy towed a badly burned crewman to safety by swimming with the man's life-jacket strap clenched between his teeth.

Since 1974 the US vice president's official residence has stood on the grounds of which Navy facility in Washington?

The Naval Observatory's grounds hold a house built in 1893 for its superintendent; Walter Mondale became the first vice president to move in.

Which disco group shot the video for their 1979 hit 'In the Navy' on the deck of the frigate USS Reasoner?

Village People's manager gave the Navy the song free for a recruiting campaign on condition that it help shoot the video, which the Navy then never used.

Sailors nicknamed the US Navy's dome-topped Phalanx anti-missile gun after which Star Wars droid?

R2-D2 lent his name to the Phalanx because of its barrel-shaped radar dome, which finds and tracks incoming missiles for a 20 mm cannon with no human aiming it.

US Navy enlisted dress blues share a nickname with which caramel popcorn snack whose box shows a sailor boy?

Cracker Jack boxes show Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo, and the bell-bottomed sailor suit picked up the name 'crackerjacks' from that mascot.

Besides bottlenose dolphins, which animals does the US Navy train to find mines and guard harbors?

Sea lions carry a clamp in their mouths and snap it around an intruding swimmer's limb like a handcuff, relying on sharp underwater hearing and low-light vision.

Flight 19, five Navy torpedo bombers that vanished off Florida in December 1945, fed the legend of which region?

The Bermuda Triangle legend grew because a Mariner flying boat sent out to search for the 14 missing airmen was also lost that night with all 13 of its crew.

Which Naval Academy graduate nicknamed 'The Admiral' won two NBA championships with the San Antonio Spurs?

David Robinson was the first pick of the 1987 NBA draft but did not play a game until 1989, because he first had to serve out his active-duty obligation as a Navy officer.

By tradition, a new US Navy ship is christened when its sponsor breaks a bottle of what across the bow?

Champagne became the usual christening drink only as the 19th century closed; in 1797 the frigate Constitution was launched with a bottle of fine old Madeira.

Which submarine officer is the only US Naval Academy graduate to become president of the United States?

Jimmy Carter, as a young lieutenant, led a Navy crew that was lowered into a crippled Canadian reactor at Chalk River to help take it apart.

Which country did the young US Navy fight in the undeclared Quasi-War of 1798 to 1800?

France's privateers had been seizing American merchant ships, and the crisis led President John Adams to appoint Benjamin Stoddert the first Secretary of the Navy.

On which lake did nine American vessels defeat and capture a British squadron of six in September 1813?

Lake Erie was won under a battle flag bearing the dying command of Captain James Lawrence of USS Chesapeake, never to give up the ship.

Which US Navy commodore's 'black ships' anchored in Edo Bay in 1853 and pressed Japan to open up to foreign trade?

Matthew Perry was sent by President Millard Fillmore and came back in 1854 to sign the Convention of Kanagawa, which ended Japan's long isolation.

Which Union ironclad, designed by John Ericsson, brought a revolving gun turret to its 1862 duel with CSS Virginia?

USS Monitor fought the Confederate ship to a stalemate, then foundered under tow in a storm off Cape Hatteras on the last day of that same year.

Which hand-cranked Confederate submarine became the first to sink a warship when it attacked USS Housatonic in 1864?

H. L. Hunley never returned from the attack, and two earlier sinkings on trial runs had already killed 13 men, among them the inventor it was named for.

The 1898 explosion of which US Navy warship in Havana harbor helped push the United States into war with Spain?

USS Maine lost more than 250 men, and American newspapers blamed Spain, though later investigators have argued that a fire in one of its own coal bunkers set off the blast.

Which victor of the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay is the only officer ever appointed to the rank Admiral of the Navy?

George Dewey received the specially created grade as a reward for the battle, and it is considered at least the equal of a five-star admiral.

Which Naval War College lecturer wrote The Influence of Sea Power upon History, an 1890 book read by navies worldwide?

Alfred Thayer Mahan became a household name in the German navy after Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered his officers to read the book.

Which animal appears on the First Navy Jack, the striped flag flown by every US warship from 2002 to 2019?

A rattlesnake stretches across 13 red and white stripes above a warning not to tread on it, and the jack returned to the fleet on September 11, 2002.

Which march did Naval Academy bandmaster Charles Zimmermann compose in 1906 for a football game against Army?

Anchors Aweigh was first played at the 1906 Army–Navy game, which Navy won 10–0 for its first win in the series since 1900.

Which converted coal ship, nicknamed the 'Covered Wagon', became the US Navy's first aircraft carrier?

USS Langley began life as the collier Jupiter, and after a Japanese air attack off Java in February 1942 it had to be scuttled.

Which civilian exhibition pilot is credited with the first aircraft takeoff from a ship and the first landing on one?

Eugene Ely stopped his Curtiss Pusher on the cruiser USS Pennsylvania in 1911 by snagging ropes laid across a platform, each weighted with 50-pound sandbags.

Which US destroyer was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat near Iceland five weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor?

USS Reuben James went down with 100 of its crew while escorting a convoy, before the United States had officially joined the war.

What was the surname of the five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, who died when the cruiser USS Juneau sank in 1942?

The Sullivan brothers had enlisted on condition that they serve together, and two later warships were named USS The Sullivans in their memory.

Which admiral, nicknamed 'Bull' by the press, led the carrier task force that launched the 1942 Doolittle Raid?

William Halsey had spent the weeks before it leading hit-and-run carrier raids on the Gilbert and Marshall islands and on Wake, and he received a fifth star in December 1945.

Which 1944 battle off the Philippines, often ranked history's largest at sea, saw the first organized kamikaze attacks?

Leyte Gulf drew in hundreds of ships across four linked actions and included the last battle ever fought between battleships.

Which acronym named the World War II women's branch of the Naval Reserve, led by college president Mildred McAfee?

WAVES stood for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; the woman who coined it hoped 'Emergency' would reassure older admirals that the women were only temporary.

Which mess attendant with no gunnery training earned the Navy Cross for manning a gun at Pearl Harbor?

Doris Miller first helped carry wounded shipmates to safety aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, and he became the first Black recipient of the medal.

Which nuclear attack submarine sank during deep-diving tests east of Cape Cod in April 1963, killing all 129 aboard?

USS Thresher was the first nuclear submarine lost at sea, and the disaster led the Navy to set up its rigorous SUBSAFE submarine safety program.

Which US warship's 1964 clash with North Vietnamese torpedo boats led Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?

USS Maddox was on a signals intelligence patrol when three boats attacked on 2 August; a second attack reported two nights later turned out never to have happened.

Which guided-missile destroyer was hit by a suicide boat while refueling in Yemen's Aden harbor in 2000?

USS Cole was taking on fuel when a small fiberglass boat carrying explosives and two suicide bombers blew a 40-by-60-foot gash in its side.

Which cruise missile, fired from US Navy ships and submarines, made its combat debut in the 1991 Gulf War?

Tomahawk missiles fly low at subsonic speed, and 288 of them were launched in that war, all but 12 from surface ships.

What was the official code name of the May 2011 raid in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan?

Neptune Spear was a nod to the trident on the SEALs' Special Warfare insignia, the three-pronged weapon carried by the Roman god of the sea.

Which Navy rear admiral, a computer pioneer who helped create COBOL, has a destroyer named in her honor?

Grace Hopper retired at 79 as the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the Navy, at a ceremony held aboard its oldest commissioned ship.

Which future senator, the son and grandson of four-star admirals, was shot down over Hanoi in 1967?

John McCain stayed a prisoner until 1973, having refused an early release offered after his father took command of all US forces in the Vietnam theater.

Which Naval Academy graduate and naval aviator became the first American in space aboard Freedom 7 in 1961?

Alan Shepard later commanded Apollo 14 and, at 47, was the oldest of the twelve Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon.

Which Naval Academy quarterback won the 1963 Heisman Trophy and later led the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl titles?

Roger Staubach was found to be color-blind at the Academy, so he was commissioned into the Supply Corps and served a tour in Vietnam before joining Dallas in 1969.

Which stealth destroyer, commissioned in 2016, had a first commanding officer named Captain James Kirk?

USS Zumwalt has a radar cross-section similar to a fishing boat's despite its size, thanks to a wave-piercing inverted bow and an inward-sloping hull.

Which admiral, nicknamed '31-Knot' while leading WWII destroyers, is the namesake of a class of Aegis destroyers?

In the usual telling, Arleigh Burke's nickname began as a taunt, after a blocked boiler tube held his squadron to 31 knots instead of the 34 or more it could make.

Which US Navy commodore, the first Jewish officer of that rank, fought to end flogging and bought Monticello?

Uriah Levy, an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, paid $2,700 for the long-neglected estate in 1834 and set about having it repaired and preserved.

Which word for a ship's left side did the US Navy adopt in 1846 because 'larboard' sounded too much like starboard?

Port replaced it two years after Britain's Royal Navy made the same change, though whalers went on saying larboard well into the 1850s.

In US Navy tradition, a 'pollywog' becomes what after an initiation ceremony on first crossing the equator?

Shellback initiations were once brutal: as late as World War II they could include jabs from an electrified piece of metal known as the Devil's Tongue.

Which two-word naval signal, sent by flag hoist or voice radio, tells a US Navy crew 'well done'?

Bravo Zulu comes from an Allied tactical signals publication, and putting the word NEGAT in front of it turns the praise into 'not well done'.

Which Navy slang word for gossip first named a cask of drinking water kept on a ship's deck?

Scuttlebutt joins 'butt', a barrel, to 'scuttle', the hole cut in it for a dipper; sailors are traditionally said to have swapped rumors around it.

Which US Navy sailors earn a pin nicknamed 'Dolphins' after about a year spent qualifying on every system aboard?

Submariners of every rank and job go through the qualification with no exemptions, and the insignia they earn comes in silver or gold.

What name do Navy SEAL candidates give the five and a half days of continuous training early in their BUD/S course?

Hell Week allows each candidate at most four hours of sleep in all, while they run more than 200 miles and train for over 20 hours a day.

Which country has leased the US Navy its oldest overseas base since 1903 but refuses to cash the rent checks?

Cuba has protested the American presence at Guantanamo Bay ever since 1959, calling the lease illegal, and leaves the yearly rent checks undeposited.

Which US Navy airship, a flying aircraft carrier for Sparrowhawk fighters, crashed off New Jersey in 1933, killing 73?

USS Akron went down in a thunderstorm with only three survivors among the 76 aboard, the greatest loss of life in any airship crash.

The Naval Academy statue nicknamed Tecumseh is a bronze copy of a ship's figurehead depicting which Lenape leader?

Tamanend was carved as the figurehead of the warship USS Delaware, and the class of 1891 paid for the bronze copy that replaced the decaying wood in 1930.

Which Secretary of the Navy banned alcohol aboard US Navy ships with General Order 99 in June 1914?

Josephus Daniels's ban outlasted national Prohibition: after 1933 the Navy went on keeping its ships dry, apart from limited access to beer.