Navy Trivia
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100 free Navy trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Navy trivia questions with answers. From two armed vessels authorized in October 1775 to nuclear supercarriers longer than three football fields, the US Navy has a history packed with great stories, and this quiz runs through the best of them. You will meet John Paul Jones and Old Ironsides, the burning of a captured frigate at Tripoli, the first duel of ironclads, the Great White Fleet, Pearl Harbor and Midway, the surrender aboard a battleship in Tokyo Bay, the first nuclear submarine under the North Pole, the SEALs, the Blue Angels, Annapolis traditions and the odd bits of Navy slang like the goat locker. The world's other navies get their turn too: Nelson at Trafalgar, the Spanish Armada and its fireships, Tsushima, Jutland, the hunt for the Bismarck and the question of who has the biggest fleet today. There are questions here for a sailor, a veteran, a history buff or anyone who has watched Top Gun a few too many times. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and primary sources before it went in, so you can argue about them at the bar with confidence.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The US Navy's birthday marks a 1775 vote by Congress to arm two vessels for what mission?
Intercepting British supply ships
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.
Q 02Which captain fought HMS Serapis from the Bonhomme Richard in 1779 and is called 'Father of the American Navy'?
John Paul Jones
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.
Q 03USS Constitution became 'Old Ironsides' by capturing which British frigate in 1812?
HMS Guerriere
HMS Guerriere's shot glanced off Constitution's hull, and a sailor is said to have shouted that her sides were made of iron.
Q 04USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship afloat, is berthed in which city?
Boston
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.
Q 05Who led the 1804 night raid that burned a captured American frigate in Tripoli harbor?
Stephen Decatur
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.
Q 06The Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia was rebuilt from the hulk of which burned Union steam frigate?
USS Merrimack
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.
Q 07Who ordered the 16-battleship 'Great White Fleet' to sail around the world between 1907 and 1909?
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Q 08Which commander of Japan's Combined Fleet planned the Pearl Harbor attack?
Isoroku Yamamoto
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.
Q 09Which battleship, where 1,177 died at Pearl Harbor, still lies beneath a memorial built across it?
USS Arizona
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.
Q 10To confirm Japan's target, US codebreakers had Midway falsely radio that it was short of what?
Fresh water
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.
Q 11Which US carrier, patched up in days after the Coral Sea, was the only American flattop lost at Midway?
USS Yorktown
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.
Q 12Asked where the April 1942 Doolittle raiders had launched from, FDR joked they came from which fictional place?
Shangri-La
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.
Q 13The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on 2 September 1945 on the deck of which battleship?
USS Missouri
Q 21Which Secretary of the Navy founded the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845 and gave his name to its giant dormitory?
George Bancroft
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'.
Q 22What is the greased obelisk Naval Academy plebes climb at the end of their first year called?
Herndon Monument
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.
Q 23What is the Naval Academy's live mascot named, adopted after Navy first beat Army in football in 1890?
Bill
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.
Q 14USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, made history in August 1958 by doing what?
Passing submerged beneath the North Pole
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.
Q 15Which officer, who supervised the building of USS Nautilus, is known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy"?
Hyman Rickover
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.
Q 16Which carrier, commissioned in 1961, was the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier?
USS Enterprise
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.
Q 17Which Navy flying unit took its name from a New York nightclub that its pilots saw advertised in The New Yorker?
Blue Angels
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.
Q 18Which jet did the Navy's flight demonstration team adopt for its 2021 show season?
F/A-18 Super Hornet
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.
Q 19The first two Navy SEAL teams were commissioned in January of which year?
1962
Team One went to Coronado, California and Team Two to Little Creek, Virginia; both grew out of the WWII-era Underwater Demolition Teams.
Q 20What does the acronym SEAL stand for in 'Navy SEALs'?
Sea, Air, and Land
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.
Navy adopted the goat as its mascot in 1890, the year it beat Army in their very first football meeting.
Q 24The 'Navy Hymn', written by William Whiting in 1860, has what title?
Eternal Father, Strong to Save
Eternal Father, Strong to Save became a Navy fixture after 1879, when the Naval Academy's choirmaster began closing every Sunday service with it.
Q 25The annual Army–Navy football game, first played in 1890, is most often held in which neutral city?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia sits roughly halfway between West Point and Annapolis, which is why it has hosted most of the games as a neutral site.
Q 26TOPGUN was established in 1969 at which California naval air station?
NAS Miramar
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.
Q 27The Navy's Seabees take their name from the initials of what?
Construction Battalion
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.
Q 28Alongside 'We build, we fight', which two-word slogan did the Seabees famously adopt as their motto?
Can Do
Can Do suited men recruited for experience rather than youth: in the early days of the war the average Seabee was 37 years old.
Q 29Which California city staged a 1935 Fleet Week alongside the exposition it was hosting in Balboa Park?
San Diego
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.
Q 30Which admiral, killed at Trafalgar in 1805, signalled 'England expects that every man will do his duty'?
Horatio Nelson
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.