About

Naval Gazing is an exploration of the world of naval warfare from 1860 to the present, with occasional forays into the broader defense and maritime fields. So far as I have a primary focus, it's battleships and the battleship era, but I also write a fair bit on modern topics. And there are occasional jaunts through obscure corners of naval history, or other topics that I think will be of interest to my readers. It grew out of my time as a tour guide on the battleship Iowa (BB-61) in Los Angeles, and although I now live halfway across the country, Iowa is still one of the mainstays of this blog. It also came from my frustration with existing sources, which tended to be either way too high-level or too technical, with very little to bring an interested general audience up to speed.

I post once a week, Sunday at 7 AM Central. Every other Friday, there's the Open Thread (talk about anything you want, even if it's not naval/military). I may occasionally post on Wednesday, either a guest-post (email me at battleshipbean at gmail if you're interested in contributing) or something low-effort or split for flow reasons. Note that I consider older posts valuable and regularly go through to update links and such. Necros on comment threads are allowed and encouraged. A few old posts are locked because of spam, and I'll unlock them if you have something to say and ask in the latest OT.

If you're new to the blog or the subject, the best place to start is probably Basics of Naval Strategy. Other good introductory posts are overviews of the development of the battleship, aircraft carrier, cruiser, destroyer and submarine and glossaries of warships in the first and second halves of the 20th century. Or, on the less technical side, a look at the US Navy today. Beyond that, I have a longer list of Top Posts and a full index by topic.

About Me

I've been a military geek since I was in grade school, although my affections didn't settle on matters naval until after I graduated college with a degree in aerospace engineering. My first job was in LA, and I went to visit the battleship Iowa a few weeks after my arrival. I quickly signed up as a tour guide to see more of the ship, and discovered that being able to talk about battleships and have people listen was just about the best thing ever. Unfortunately, I didn't like my actual job, and ended up getting another job in Oklahoma, doing work on military aircraft. This meant an end to tour guiding, although I'd stumbled into writing about battleships online about six months earlier, and decided to start a proper blog. This is the result.

I can be reached at battleshipbean at gmail, and always enjoy hearing from readers.

Comments Policy

In an attempt to maintain the incredibly friendly comments section and avoid spending a bunch of time on moderation, I have a blanket ban on culture war topics. This is loosely defined, but basically anything that's likely to cause lots of heat and little light in a discussion should be approached with caution. Defense politics are OK, but it's generally much more helpful to frame them in terms of the administration than in terms of specific hot-button individuals.