History Project

One of the Association’s objectives is to preserve the legacy of the Admiral and his ship. 

We are starting a new effort for this preservation – histories of those that contributed to the success of Arleigh Burke.

Note – this started with the title “Oral History” – but we are now using the more general title “History Project” – recognizing that submissions are also coming in as written answers to our questions and in the form of documents we are capturing to archive.

Initial focus is the Arleigh Burke to Sea period, including design, construction, precomm, commissioning, DT-OT, PSA, deployment preparations, and first deployment. Time is of the essence as we are starting to lose the heroes that made Arleigh Burke to Sea a reality.

But any Arleigh Burke (ship or admiral) related oral history is appreciated.

The first interview is complete and posted – and it underscores the relevance of this effort –

And this is what success feels like. Remember that. I felt that way about Burke. We did a good job and we were successful. And I learned what success felt like. And I used that as a measuring stick for other things that I got involved in. 

You know, if you do something the right way and you have success, even if it was hard, it’s something that you should keep in mind. You know, this is what it takes. These are the kind of things that you have to do to ensure success

CAPT John Ingram

We have a long (and growing) list of folks to interview. We need volunteers to conduct interviews and to process the resulting audio files for posting. 

• Interviews can be done in person, via phone, or video. We need an audio file captured for transcription. Time investment is ~ two hours for interview, plus preparation with questions, practice recording, scheduling, & uploading the completed audio file. 
  • Oral History Release
  • Oral History Questions
  • Oral History ROE

• Processing the captured audio into a usable transcript takes about two to four times the interview time, some computer skill, and helps to have some knowledge in the topic area – mostly to recognize acronyms that stump the AI.

• Please contact us if you can support the project.

Completed Interviews:

CAPT John Ingram, USN, Ret, Program Manager & SupShip – Oct 5, 2023

John C Mason, BIW DDG-51 Program Leader – April, 2024

CAPT Brian Perkinson, USN, Ret, DDG-51 Program Manager – Feb 20, 2024

Andy Summers, DDG-51 Ship Design Manager – March 26, 2024

LCDR Ray Weber, USN, Ret, Warranty-Guarantee Engineer – Feb 23, 2024

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VADM John Morgan, DDG-51 Commanding Officer, in processing

Project Output

Some theses from the history project

Some interesting bits and pieces from the history project

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The history project was inspired by Ray Weber, initial DDG51 warranty-guarantee ship rider, our unofficial assistant chief engineer, and DDG51 class booster