"Mr. President, these are the exploits of a battleship--that much maligned weapon which our armchair strategists have loudly proclaimed to be an obsolete and utterly useless weapon untenable in the face of combined sea and air attack."

06/25/08

This web site describes my work and  expresses my interests.  I first began seriously researching the subject of naval surface combat twenty-five years ago. This began a systematic quest to identify and describe every naval surface action fought during the Second World War. (What is a surface engagement? See the commentary section.)  My quest led, like most quests do, to unexpected discoveries and the growing conviction that much history written after the war inaccurately discounted the contributions of the surface fleets of all nations, dismissing gun and torpedo armed warships as relics of a superceded technology and a bygone era.

The Naval Institute Press published my first book, German Fleet at War in October 2004 and The U.S. Navy Against the Axis: Surface Combat 1941-1945  in March 2007. Over the last four years my work has also appeared in a half dozen periodicals and annuals. I am a member of the Naval Institute, the International Naval Research Organization, the Society of Military History, the San Diego Maritime Museum, and World War II Quarterly's Editorial Review Board. I hold a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley.