Naval Forces Under the Sea: A Look Back, A Look Ahead

This fascinating book details one of the most interesting and historical symposiums ever presented at the U.S. Naval Academy. Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, the primary objective of this symposium was to address and highlight the U.S. Navy’s significant developments in science and technology related to diving, special warfare, and submarine search and rescue. The symposium attracted national press coverage and highlighted the U.S. Navy’s contributions to diving and submarine rescue through lectures, panel discussions, and oral history recordings.

A secondary objective was to capture and preserve the historical base of knowledge in these disciplines that in many cases reside only in the minds of the contributors. The many attendees, students and faculty listened to historians and naval experts from around the world discuss some of the most daring and dangerous missions of the past century, as well as learned about the future of undersea technologies. In effect it served as the "passing of the torch" from one generation to another and yet it refocused attention on the future of undersea warfare.

The symposium was a once-in-a-lifetime assembly of living icons in U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare from the past 60 years. The hope is that these Proceedings will help preserve the history of this important component of the U.S. Navy’s past and plant a few seeds for future leaders in our Naval Forces Under the Sea.