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Home of Naval History and News

Welcome to the home page of the Navy General Board website! This is your portal to all things navy, whether it be current events or historical topics. You can find a wide range of news stories or historical articles on the website. You can also connect with fellow readers on the website forum.

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History Articles

Navy General Board was created to help share all aspects of naval history from throughout the ages. Here you will find our collection of history articles. It has come a long way and has something for everyone. Take your time and browse them all!

The Tarawa coast-watch massacre of 1942

During 1941 a small group of New Zealand coast-watchers, mainly civilian volunteers from the Post and Telegraph Department, were stationed in the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati). They formed part of a forward line of listening posts intended to intercept Japanese radio...

The Washington Treaty and the Royal Navy’s scrapping programmes

The naval treaty of 6 February 1922 negotiated in Washington – technically the ‘Five Power Treaty’, but afterwards simply called the ‘Washington Treaty’ - included lists of the ships that signatories were required to dispose of. The longest was British. A significant...

How some key naval engineering terms migrated into English

It’s been said that English is a language that pursues other languages down dark alleys and mugs them for vocabulary, then riffles their pockets for more, and that’s certainly true of a fair number of naval engineering terms. Words such as ‘barbette’, ‘casemate’ and...

Battleship showdown: King George V vs. North Carolina

King George V vs. North Carolina, a question that reveals a lot about the design and intentions behind the first modern post-treaty battleships of the United Kingdom and United States. In this article, we will examine some of the features behind both ships and see how...

Who won the Battle of Jutland?

On the afternoon of 31 May 1916, and on into the early hours of 1 June, the British Grand Fleet and the German fleet came to blows off the Denmark coast in a battle known to the British as the Battle of Jutland, to the Germans as the Skagerrak.[1] It was the first –...

Naval heroism, politics and Jutland: the story of Jack Cornwell VC

One of the most poignant human stories to come out of the Battle of Jutland was that of sixteen year old John Travers Cornwell, J/42563. He was a Boy, 1st Class, aboard HMS Chester during that clash of fleets at the end of May 1916, and he became one of the youngest...

A look at British B.VIII naval gun machinery and variants

By the early twentieth century one of the problems the British had with their heavy naval guns was that existing gun machinery could not elevate or depress the guns quickly enough to compensate for the roll of the ship. In some conditions the turntables could not...

Ersatz Yorck vs. HMS Hood

‘WHAT-IF?’ The winter of 1918/19 was finally loosening its grip on the cold waters of the North Sea, and then after a long season, the dawn of a new spring was finally in the offering to the war weary continent. It would be the fifth year of The Great War, (the "War...

AAA Umbrella vs Rain of Bombs – Naval Anti-Aircraft vs Aircraft in World War II

AAA Umbrella vs Rain of Bombs Naval Anti-Aircraft vs Aircraft in World War II “Nothing can stop the attack of aircraft except other aircraft” – William “Billy” Mitchel Before World War II, air power enthusiasts believed air power would sweep the seas clear of ships...

The other HMS Hood – Britain’s last turret ship

Mention HMS Hood and just one ship usually springs to mind. However, there was another HMS Hood, a battleship laid down for the Royal Navy in August 1889, which survived long enough to be given one last - and decisively final - role a few months after the outbreak of...

A Cold War Warrior: A Walkthrough of a Foxtrot Class Submarine

By Blair Shaw Looking quite out of place in a tiny marina in the town of Zeebrugge Belgium is the former Russian project 641 NATO code name Foxtrot class submarine B-821. B-821 and her seventy-four other sisters would become one of the most produced post World War 2...

Speed and armour: Fisher’s battlecruisers vs Admiralty politics

In 1919 the embittered Admiral Sir John Fisher, former First Sea Lord and the long-standing champion of naval technology, summed up his recent thinking about heavy warships in three words: ‘speed is armour’.[1] The phrase has since been inextricably associated with...

The story behind the battlecruiser HMAS Australia

In March 1909 there was a good deal of around Australia’s major cities about responding to the latest Imperial naval crisis by giving Britain a battleship. At a time when social militarism was a major feature of society the call resonated. It also came on the eve of a...

The First Submarine of the Civil War:The Story of “Alligator Junior”

Chuck Veit(www.chuckveitbooks.com) excerpted from the author’s bookNatural Genius:Brutus de Villeroi and the  U. S. Navy’s First Submarine We are taught that USS Holland (SS-1) in 1900 was the first modern submarine in the U.S. Navy. This is true—but this was not...

New photos of HMS Hood in 1924

It is not often that previously unknown photos of HMS Hood are discovered. A set were found recently in a New Zealand archive, and are reproduced here for the first time on a naval website. The quality is typical of the day: the slightly blurred imagery typical of the...

News and Current Events

A relatively new addition to the Navy General Board website. While we remain focused on sharing history, we also want to examine naval current events that are occuring across the world. This section is still new, but more articles are coming. 

China’s Newest Warship : The Type 55 Destroyer

At a time when the United States Navy is struggling to determine the future of its Navy, China has been quietly building up its naval forces. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has risen to be the second largest navy in the world by tonnage. It’s not just quantity that...

Why China’s Island Bases are Not a Big Deal

Over the past few years, the media has made a big deal of the artificial island bases that China has built in the South China Sea. Several of these islands are well fortified, featuring harbors, airstrips, and formidable land-based weaponry. Some in the media have...

The Navy’s FFG(X) Program : Foreign and Domestic Options

The Navy has all but admitted that the Littoral Combat Ships are a flop. Therefore, they have started looking at potential ships to fulfill requirements for a new frigate design known as the FFG(X) Program. Make makes things interesting is that this time the US Navy...

Canada’s Next Generation Submarine

My own opinion and hypothesis on what class of submarine could become Canada’s next generation submarine

Want to go a little bit further than simply reading an aritcle? Interesting in writing your own and sharing it with Navy General Board? Check out our about us page for information on becoming a guest writer for the Navy General Board website! We are looking for both historical pieces and current events happening with navies across the World. 

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