Naval History and Heritage Command

NHHC photo no. NH 537, Sixth Battle Squadron. U.S. Navy battleships in British waters during World War I. Download image.

Along with fleet expansion, maritime and aerial technical developments progressed in leaps and bounds during World War I, and the conflict saw the U.S. Navy employing both older and newer technology side by side. Thus, older coal-fired vessels from the Spanish-American War and Great White Fleet eras continued to serve with newer-construction combatants outfitted with much more efficient oil-powered plants. Submarines became an integral part of naval operations. Naval aviation moved from flimsy pre-war flying machines to amphibious patrol and bombing aircraft and operational fighters, and began the path to 1920s carrier-borne flight operations. 

Ships

• USS Olympia and the Russian Civil War: The Allied Intervention at Archangel and Murmansk in 1918. An essay by Adam Bisno, Ph.D., NHHC Communication and Outreach Division, February 2019.

• U.S. Naval Forces Operating in European Waters, September/October 1918. Organizational chart providing snapshot of U.S. naval forces in September/October 1918, with links to ship histories and flag officer biographies.
  

• U.S. Navy Active Ship Force Levels, 1917–1923

• Vessels Attached to U.S. Naval Forces in France. This table, included in Account of the Operations of the American Navy in France during the War with Germany, includes links to ship histories.

• American Ship Casualties in World War I

• Story Map: U.S. Navy Losses in World War I

Aviation

• Naval Aviation 1910–2010

  • Volume I, Chapter 1: A Few Pioneers, 1898–1916

  • Volume I, Chapter 2: Test of Strength, 1917–1919

  • Volume II: Statistics

• Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons Volume II: History of VP, VPB, VP(H) and VP(AM) Squadrons

• Naval Aviation in World War I 

• U.S. Navy Aeronautic Detachment No. 1. NHHC Historian Peter Luebke writes about the formation and operations of the first U.S. unit to set foot in France in World War I.
  

• Wings Over the Ocean: A History of Sea-Air Aviation

• 75th Year of Naval Aviation Commemoration Collection

  • Volume I: Naval Aviation Training

  • Volume IV: Kite Balloons to Airships…the Navy’s Lighter-than-Air Experience

  • Volume V: History of U.S. Marine Corps Aviation

• Instructions on Reception, Care and Training of Homing Pigeons in Newly Installed Lofts at Navy Air Bases

Robert S. Waters collection, photo no. S-012.01. U.S. Navy personnel at NAS Treguier circa 1918; Robert S. Waters at left.
Download image.