The ''Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships'' (''DANFS'') is the official reference work for the basic facts about ships used by the United States Navy. When the writing project was developed the parameters for this series were designed to cover only commissioned US Navy ships with assigned names. If the ship was not assigned a name it was not included in the histories written for the series. In addition to the ship entries, ''DANFS'' and the online links have been expanded to include appendices on small craft, histories of Confederate Navy ships, and various essays related to naval ships.

Forewords and introductions

Foreword A foreword is a (usually short) piece of writing, sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Typically written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the ...

and introduction passages for many editions were written by big names from naval command history from

Arleigh Albert Burke Arleigh Albert Burke (October 19, 1901 – January 1, 1996) was an admiral of the United States Navy who distinguished himself during World War II and the Korean War, and who served as Chief of Naval Operations during the Eisenhower and Kennedy ...

to Elmo Russell Zumwalt, Jr. and others.

Authors

Publication data

''DANFS'' was published in print by the Naval Historical Center (NHC) as bound hardcover volumes, ordered by ship name, from Volume I (A–B) in 1959 to Volume VIII (W–Z) in 1981. Several volumes subsequently went out of print. In 1991 a revised ''Volume I Part A'', covering only ship names beginning with A, was released. Work continues on revisions of the remaining volumes. Volunteers at the Hazegray website undertook to transcribe the ''DANFS'' and make it available on the World Wide Web. The project goal is a direct transcription of the ''DANFS'', with changes limited to correcting typographical errors and editorial notes for incorrect facts in the original. In 2008 the NHC was re-designated as the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC). It has developed an online version of ''DANFS'' (see External links section below) through a combination of optical character recognition (OCR) and hand transcription. The NHHC is slowly updating its online ''DANFS'' to correct errors and take into account the gap in time between the print publication and the present date. NHHC prioritizes updates as follows: ships currently commissioned, ships commissioned after the original volume publication, ships decommissioned after original volume publication, and finally updates to older ships. The NHHC has begun a related project to place Ship History and Command Operations Reports online at their ''DANFS'' site.

Reference use

As the ''DANFS'' is a work of the U.S. government, its content is in the public domain, and the text is often quoted verbatim in other works. Many websites organized by former and active crew members of U.S. Navy vessels include a copy of their ships' ''DANFS'' entries. The ''Dictionary'' limits itself largely to basic descriptions and brief operational notes, and includes almost no analysis or historical context.

References

External links