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Kenneth Mansfield
 
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Kenneth Mansfield
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13 August 2013 19:10
 

egads (not about your flag, Jeremy)

 
 
Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
 
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Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
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14 August 2013 07:00
 

That is horrible, I want the tax dollars spent on that destroyer back! raspberry

 
arriano
 
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arriano
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14 August 2013 16:09
 

Any chance some heraldic scholars, artists, etc. could send letters to the director saying, "Hey, some of these designs are really bad heraldry." If no one officially complains, the Institute will think everything is hunky dory and continue as it has.

 
Kenneth Mansfield
 
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Kenneth Mansfield
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14 August 2013 16:19
 

arriano;100210 wrote:

Any chance some heraldic scholars, artists, etc. could send letters to the director saying, "Hey, some of these designs are really bad heraldry." If no one officially complains, the Institute will think everything is hunky dory and continue as it has.


Joe will correct me if I’m wrong, but it really isn’t TIOH who comes up with many of the designs for the arms of ships. It is the prerogative of the commanding officer of the ship and if we’re lucky, they work with TIOH in coming up with the design. TIOH will I think ultimately be responsible for rendering it, but they don’t always have input and definitely not the final say. More’s the pity.

 
 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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14 August 2013 16:55
 

Kenneth Mansfield;100211 wrote:

Joe will correct me if I’m wrong, but it really isn’t TIOH who comes up with many of the designs for the arms of ships. It is the prerogative of the commanding officer of the ship and if we’re lucky, they work with TIOH in coming up with the design. TIOH will I think ultimately be responsible for rendering it, but they don’t always have input and definitely not the final say. More’s the pity.


Correct.  Rest assured that the director is not under any misimpressions on the quality of some of these.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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14 August 2013 22:12
 

Ken—as we used to say when I was in (and apparently it’s still true) "There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way."

You shouldn’t need three guesses to figure out which controls…

 

Or perhaps the old saw, "What’s the difference between the Army and the Boy Scouts?—Adult supervison."

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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14 August 2013 22:58
 

Michael F. McCartney;100218 wrote:

Ken—as we used to say when I was in (and apparently it’s still true) "There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way."

You shouldn’t need three guesses to figure out which controls…

 

Or perhaps the old saw, "What’s the difference between the Army and the Boy Scouts?—Adult supervison."


In this case the Army way is the right way, or as close to it as we’re likely to get.  The unit gets input, but TIOH gets the final say.  Other services, however, are paying customers; TIOH can advise but not dictate.  The Air Force has a heraldic office that must approve unit insignia, but there isn’t one for Navy ships.

 
Marcus K
 
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Marcus K
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15 August 2013 13:13
 

And infact many a Ship gets an emblem without involving the TIOH at all. These are rather unheraldic Badges and seems especialy popular with Aircraft Carriers and Submarines.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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15 August 2013 22:17
 

Joe—thanks for the clarification on differing TIOH role(s) & level(s) of control depending on the client—makes sense, even though we might wish for more across the board.

 
arriano
 
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arriano
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16 August 2013 16:31
 

Out of curiousity, does anyone know when ships, particularly U.S. Navy ships, started getting heraldic devices? And is it common in foreign navies?

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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16 August 2013 17:02
 

arriano;100279 wrote:

Out of curiousity, does anyone know when ships, particularly U.S. Navy ships, started getting heraldic devices? And is it common in foreign navies?


U.S. submarines were using badges, albeit of non-armorial style,during World War II if not before.  I’ve seen surface ship using badges and even some pretty good coats of arms as early as the 1950s.  This is the coat assumed by the destroyer USS Beale, which only carried the DDE designation on the scroll from 1951-1962.

 

http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1243&stc=1&d=1376686718

 

And this is the very nice coat of arms of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, which carried the CVS designation on the scroll from 1957 to 1970.

 

http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1244&stc=1&d=1376686927

 

 

The Royal Navy and its Commonwealth offspring use heraldic badges, generally solidly heraldic since they are designed (at least the RN ones) by heralds of the College of Arms.  Portuguese Navy ships have coats of arms.  Royal Netherlands Navy ships have badges similar to those of the (British) Royal Navy.  Not sure about others.

 
James Dempster
 
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James Dempster
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17 August 2013 01:29
 

arriano;100279 wrote:

Out of curiousity, does anyone know when ships, particularly U.S. Navy ships, started getting heraldic devices? And is it common in foreign navies?


The Royal Navy started using its current type of official badge in 1918. The following from "The Royal Navy" by E.C. Talbot-Booth (London 1941)


Quote:

When British ships first carried badges or crests is not known, but it is known that no official sanction was given until towards the close of the Great War in 1918.

Up to that time there was a very large number of badges in use and during the course of a ship’s life she gathered together on many occasions a very numerous collection of different badges.

 

Being unofficial they depended upon the Commanding Officer, and it was only natural that most officers’ ideas differed from their predecessors.

 

This was an unsatisfactory state of affairs, as not only were some of them undignified or rather absurd, but they did not strengthen that continuity of tradition which is a strong factor in all our naval affairs.

 

It was eventually agreed by the Admiralty that each ship should be allotted an official badge in the same way that each regiment in the Army had its own. A Committee was formed with the Naval Secretary as head and Mr. Charles ffoulkes CB OBE FSA, was asked to become official designer.

 

...

 

For seventeen years Mr. ffoulkes carried on his honorary task, and during this period he produced five hundred and fifty designs.

 

In 1937 the work was taken over by the College of Heralds, who naturally have every facility for the work, but, efficient as they are, it is sometimes a little doubtful whether they approach the task in quite the same "labour of love" spirit as their predecessor. It is necessary or desirable not only to be heraldically correct but also to bring to it a love of naval history and tradition.


James

 
Alexander Liptak
 
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Alexander Liptak
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18 August 2013 05:25
 

I wonder how much input the heralds (is this the correct term?) at the Army Institute of Heraldry have over the design, and how much comes from ranking officers and interested politicians? I would think the "Z" was a compromise between a politician unfamiliar with heraldry who insisted on the ships name being sprawled across the shield and the heralds at the Institute of Heraldry who wished nothing of the sort; and that the best the heralds could do was talk it down to an initial and find alternative meaning to the letter to appease the politician.

Otherwise, standard U.S. Navy symbols; we have a globe, stars, a trident and an eagle bearing arrows and olive. I can’t wait to see how they will use the same charges in the next ship’s arms.

 
Kenneth Mansfield
 
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Kenneth Mansfield
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18 August 2013 10:05
 

Alexander Liptak;100308 wrote:

I wonder how much input the heralds (is this the correct term?) at the Army Institute of Heraldry have over the design, and how much comes from ranking officers and interested politicians?


It is entirely the prerogative of the (first?) commanding officer.

 
 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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18 August 2013 11:45
 

Kenneth Mansfield;100314 wrote:

It is entirely the prerogative of the (first?) commanding officer.


Yes, but…

 

Depending on the name of the ship, there may be thousands of people who think they have a stake in everything that has to do with it. First, there’s always the first crew—the "plankholders," as they’re known—who are recognized by naval tradition as having a special interest in the ship throughout its entire career. In the case of Zumwalt, of course, there’s the family as well as the admiral’s Annapolis classmates (if any of them are still alive) and various officers who looked on him as a mentor. When a ship is named for a former ship, add the veterans who served on ships of the same name; when it’s named after a battle, add the veterans who fought in that battle; when it’s named after a city or state, you can be talking millions, some of them with political clout.

 

So, for example, when the latest USS New York was commissioned a few years ago in the wake of 9/11 (and named after the city because of 9/11), the arms of the ship simply had to depict the towers of the World Trade Center. It wouldn’t have mattered what the first CO wanted, since any officer with enough sense to rise to that position would have enough political sense to know that he didn’t want to antagonize the NYPD, the FDNY, the mayor and governor and 8 1/2 million New Yorkers.

 

This doesn’t happen with flying squadrons or Army and Air Force units.

 

That said, it’s hard not to hold the prospective CO and his pre-commissioning unit pretty severely to account for this one.