HRNM 2012 Public Programs Music Video

Have you ever seen that "lonely" viral video of the movie pirate in the setting of a rap video? Well, here is the Hampton Roads Naval Museum's take on that video, with our very own Blue Jacket Puppet stars Simon and Patty talking about some events happening at the museum next year. 



Below are the lyrics to the song, with links to the events mentioned.  For more info on all 2012 Calendar of Events at HRNM, go to www.hrnm.navy.mil or check out their Facebook page at Facebook.com/hrnavalmuseum. Stay tuned and enjoy the video!  You can continue to listen/download the song HERE.

(Simon)
Here we go. 2012 public programs
Museum events are coming back.

2012 'bout to start, come and visit us
After hours learning history, come and soak it up (soak it up)
Graphic novels in September, come and draw with us
Making cards support sailors will be so much fun.

Brick by brick we're taking LEGOs, making models, building decks,
Bring your mothers and fathers, making crafts, support vets
Boot Camp's in the summer, our Halloween the best
Visit us online you will be impressed!

(Patty)
Let's talk about the Civil War Navy
We've got events at the museum next year (what?)
J. Michael Cobb will present us a lecture (oh, interesting)
on Fort Wool's involvement in the Civil War!

(Simon)
Yeah, that was kinda weird, but we're back to 2012
Watch out naval history is coming off the shelves
McClure Field event, family fun this summer
Tourin' expo houses, see the field like a base runner.

Teachers come to us to book a school program

(Patty)
Is it free?

(Simon)
..they ask and I gotta say "Yes, Ma'am"
Always come to us, our outreach #1
Come to the museum, bring all, and have fun!

(Patty)
If you like to paint (I do), we've got a contest
Paint us some ships from Hampton Roads' shore
We will display them in our museum
During our program on the 8th of March!

Happy Holidays from USS Augusta (CA-31) and Pittsburgh (ACR-4)

This holiday greeting card comes from the Norfolk-based heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31). Built by Newport News Shipbuilding, Augusta was a well-balanced warship that served as a squadron and fleet flagship for most of her career. She was assigned duty as flagship for Commander, Scouting Force, Vice Admiral Arthur L. Willard, on 21 May 1931. During the summer of 1931, she operated with the other warships of Scouting Force carrying out tactical exercises off the New England coast. In August 1931, she was reclassified a heavy cruiser, CA-31. In September, Augusta moved south to Chesapeake Bay, where she joined her colleagues in their normal fall gunnery drills. That employment lasted until mid-November when the cruisers disbanded and retired to their respective home yards. Augusta entered the Norfolk Navy Yard at that time. At the beginning of 1932, she and the other cruisers of the Scouting Force reassembled in Hampton Roads, whence they departed on 8 January on their way to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Augusta conducted training evolutions with the Scouting Force in the vicinity of Guantanamo Bay until 18 February, when the force headed for the Panama Canal on its way to the eastern Pacific to participate in Fleet Problem XIII. She arrived in San Pedro, Calif., on 7 March but returned to sea three days later to execute the fleet problem. During the maneuvers, Augusta and her colleagues in Scouting Force squared off against Battle Force in defense of three simulated "atolls" located at widely separated points on the west coast. The exercises afforded the Fleet training in strategic scouting and an opportunity to practice defending and attacking a convoy.

The second card is from the Newport News Shipbuilding-built armored cruiser USS Pittsburgh (ex-Pennsylvania) (ACR-4). We are not sure when the card was produced, but the ship was renamed Pittsburgh in 1912 to make room for the giant battleship Pennsylvania (BB-38). Our best guess for this card is between 1917 (when she conducted war patrols) and 1922 (when she served as flagship of the U.S. Navy's European Squadron).

Battle of Hampton Roads Watercolor Contest

Mark your calendars! This winter, HRNM is running a Battle of Hampton Roads watercolor contest. Paint watercolor art relating to the battle and you may win a prize! The Battle of Hampton Roads Watercolor Contest is run by the Hampton Roads Naval Museum to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the battle. Please note the following rules regarding the contest. Contact us at hrnavalmuseum@navy.mil or 757-322-3108 with any questions or to submit your registration.

A few guidelines to remember:
- Watercolor art may be developed anytime between now and March 8. March 8 is the deadline for drop off.
- Watercolors must be created on small canvases provided by HRNM.
- All watercolor art must be original and relate to the Battle of Hampton Roads (ships, sailors, battle, etc).
- You must fill out the registration form and email it to hrnnavalmuseum@navy.mil before you start work on your watercolor. Below is a jpeg of the photo which you can print to fill out. This form is also posted here.


- All watercolors must be dropped off at HRNM by 4pm on Thursday, March 8, 2012.

A few points of interest:
- All watercolor art will be unveiled at HRNM during the FREE After Hours History program on March 8, 2012, at 6pm.
- Watercolors will be placed in different age groups and judged by age group.
- The winner in each age group will receive a prize package from HRNM.

HRNM will provide one day to work on your watercolor art at the museum: Saturday, February 25, anytime between 10am and 4pm. Register to attend that session by emailing hrnnavalmuseum@navy.mil.


We hope you'll participate in our program!

Model of USS SC136

Our good friends at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News recently completed a ship model cleaning project for the museum. Here is the result of one of their efforts, the fresh-looking 1982 model of USS Subchaser 136. This sturdy vessel was one of the original 110-foot subchasers of World War I, and was the last hull number in a series of twenty-one built at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Subchaser 136 served in an anti-submarine group along the Atlantic coast headed by USS Jouett (DD-41). SC 136 crossed the ocean in mid-1918, but arrived just as the war ended.

The Navy designed and deployed subchasers as an inexpensive solution to the critical need for anti-submarine platforms. Built out of wood (as steel was scarce in the wartime economy), the ships were built for speed and equipped with 3-inch guns and depth charges. They often worked in groups, usually with a torpedo-boat destroyer accompanying them. American yards turned out over 400 of the ships and many of them were sold to Allied nations.

Other good friends at The Subchaser Archives have posted a great series of images of SC 136 in the Caribbean in 1919, attending to the crew of USS May (SP 164), which grounded near Santo Domingo. They are available here: http://www.subchaser.org/set-sc136-09.

HRNM’s model was built by Mr.Thomas E. Tragle, a renowned builder of ship models, whose USS Monitor is also part of the museum collection. Mr. Tragle studied architectural drafting and mechanical drawing and these skills led him to employment in the model department of Newport News Shipbuilding. Later he joined the training department at Fort Eustis, where he built many different models until his retirement in 1972. From 1976 to 1986 he served as director of model building in the architecture department at Hampton Institute. He died in 1989.

Of interest to readers of this blog, Mr. Tragle was a Navy veteran of World War II, assigned to USS PC 496, a World War II subchaser. PC 496 sank in the Mediterranean as a result of a torpedo attack by an Italian submarine. Mr. Tragle has models in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, including a Union gunboat, USS Carondolet. Other works of his are displayed in the Watermen's Museum, where he served on the board of directors.

Robert Foster Collection and USS Shawmut (CM-4)

One of many cartoons collected by BM3 Robert Foster

We recently received several items that belong to BM3 Robert Foster, a sailor who served on board the Norfolk-based mine layer USS Shawmut (CM-4) from 1918 to 1922. Shawmut most famously served in the 1918 North Sea Mine Barrage during World War I. When not laying mines, she served as a seaplane tender for the fleet. The Navy later changed the name of the vessel to Oglala to avoid confusion with USS Chamount (AP-5).

Shawmut at her home pier at NOB Hampton Roads
(now Naval Station Norfolk).

Foster took several photographs of Shawmut's time in the Caribbean, when the vessel was deployed to Panama for the Atlantic Fleet's 1921-22 winter fleet exercises. Foster also took several pictures of the other ships participating  in the exercises, particularly the battleships.  He also collected newspaper cartoons about the Navy (see above) and kept them in a scrapbook.

Shawmut's sailors load up mines while
at the Yorktown Mine Depot
(now Yorktown Naval Weapons Station).

Foster took these images of the Atlantic Fleet's battleships during the 1922 winter exercises. In this set are ships that would be at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941: USS Tennessee (BB-43),USS California (BB-44), USS Arizona (BB-39), USS Pennsylvania (BB-38), and the newly built hospital ship USS Relief (AH-1).



Korean War Flight Log

In the museum's Cold War gallery is the flight log from Lieutenant Cliff Church, who flew combat missions in the Korean and Vietnam Wars in an A-1 Skyraider "Spad" fighter/bomber.  Church had the distinction of flying in one of the first and last Spad squadrons.  During his tour in Korea, he flew off the Norfolk-built and -based USS Lake Champlain (CV-39). 

Flight log books are a staple of any type of flying, whether it's a civilian or military flight.  This particular log records the type of plane and the specific plane the pilot is flying (under the "model" and "Bureau Number"); the type of flight ("Character of Flight"); the number of hours flown; and most importantly, the type of landing.  This last category was the score the pilot received from the carrier's deck landing officer on how well the pilot landed on the flight deck.  The higher the number, the better the landing.

Developed in the late 1940s, the A-1 was the Navy's and Marine Corps' workhorse bomber in the 1950s and 1960s.  Able to carry a large payload of ordnance and built to withstand ground fire, the plane was used often in air-to-ground strike missions.

Pearl Harbor Day-USS West Virginia (BB-48) Artifacts

For the 70th anniversary of the Japanese air raid on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, we present two artifacts from the battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48).  The first is the ship's wheel and the second is a binnacle used for navigation.  Both items are in the museum's World War II gallery.

USS West Virgina and Tennessee after being struck by Japanese torpedoes.

Before the war, West Virginia was stationed in Norfolk before being overhauled and modernized at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard.  The Navy then sent her to the Pacific Ocean for permanent duty.  During the air raid, Japanese planes struck West Virginia with nine torpedoes and killed over 100 sailors including her captain.  See more about the attack on Pearl Harbor at our command's website.  Salvage teams saved West Virginia after the attack. After an extensive repair and overhaul project, the battleship saw active service from  mid-1944 until the end of the war.

USS Pawnee Gangway Headboards

In the museum's Civil War gallery are the gangway headboards from the steam sloop-of-war USS Pawnee. Named for the people of the Pawnee Nation, the ship was a pre-war shallow draft steamer built specifically for littoral (i.e. coastal) duties. Heavily armed and well designed, she saw frequent service during the war on both the North Atlantic and South Atlantic Blockading Squadrons. Most notably, she rescued USS Cumberland from the Gosport Navy Yard at the beginning of the war and served in the Port Royal Expedition.  After the war, she was based in Hampton Roads and served as a hospital ship.

As the name suggests, gangway headboards would be found at the top of a ship's gangway, greeting the ship's company and visitors alike to the ship. Hand carved from a tropical hardwood such as teak or mahogany, the artist would typically create an image that was in line with the ship's name. In this case, the artist chose a Pawnee warrior on one side and his weapons on the other.

USS Midway (CV-41) Recognition Model

This is a ship recognition model of the Newport News-built aircraft carrier USS Midway (CV-41), on display in the museum’s gallery. John Reeder, a volunteer with the U.S. Navy’s Curator of Navy Ship Models, provided this write-up for us:

This model of Midway is a 1:500 (one inch of model to 500 inches of real ship) scale and produced in 1954 or 1955 by the Comet Metal Products Company, located in New York City. The Navy approved a prototype of the model in October 1954. An earlier recognition model of Midway was produced by H. A. Framburg & Company in 1945. The model here shows significant modifications, particularly the replacement of the 40mm guns by 3-inch twin mounts and removal of most 20mm anti-aircraft guns. Also, the radars are shown, which were excluded from the original model for security reasons. A final recognition model of the Midway (actually, the sister ship Franklin D. Roosevelt (CV-42)) was produced for the Navy in 1959, showing the conversion to an angled flight deck.

The Navy acquired recognition models in three scales: 1:500, 1:600 and 1:1200. The Navy purchased a set of waterline models of British and German ships in 1:1200 scale during WWI. From 1918 to 1940 it bought very small quantities of 1:1200 models for use in Submarine Attack Trainers. In 1940, a need was recognized for models to be used in classroom training - the scale chosen was 1:500. Initial sets modeling Japanese, German, and U.S. ships were produced by David Taylor Model Basin. After December 7, 1941, and throughout WWII, sets were commercially produced, primarily by three companies: Comet Metal Products, H.A. Framburg, and South Salem Studios.

The 1:500 models were meant for shore classrooms and major combatants. The above companies and others also produced versions of the models in 1:1200 scale for use by small shore stations and small combatants. Small quantities of selected models were also produced in 1:600 scale for use in Submarine Attack Trainers (which were designed to use either 1:1200 or 1:600 scale models).

Production of recognition models essentially stopped after WWII, except for the continued acquisition of small quantities of 1:1200 models for use in the Attack Trainers. However, the Korean War and the growth of the USSR naval threat led to a rebirth of the 1:500 scale program in 1952. The program was cancelled in 1962.