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Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships

Author	James L. Mooney
Publisher	Navy Dept., Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval History Division
Publication date	1959–1981
OCLC	2794587

The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS for short) is the primary reference work for the basic facts about every ship ever used by the United States Navy. Although called a dictionary, it is more accurately described as a specialized encyclopedia. In addition to the ship entries, DANFS includes appendices on small craft, histories of Confederate Navy ships, and various essays related to naval ships.

DANFS was originally released by the Naval Historical Center (NHC) in bound hardcover volumes, ordered by ship name, from Volume I (A-B) published in 1959 to Volume VII (T-Z) published in 1981. Volume I (A-B) 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.

Subsequently, the NHC developed an online version of DANFS through a combination of optical character recognition (OCR) and hand transcription. The NHC is slowly updating its online DANFS to correct errors and take into account the gap in time between its publication and the present date. NHC prioritizes updates as follows: ships currently in commission, ships that came into commission after the volume (missing), ships decommissioned after the volume (incomplete), and finally updates to older ships.^[1] The NHC has begun a related project to place Ship History and Command Operations Reports online at their DANFS site.

Because DANFS is a work of the U.S. government, its content is in the public domain, and its articles are 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 ship's DANFS article. Editors of Wikipedia often use the DANFS entry as a starting point for ship articles (e.g. USS G-1 (SS-19½).^[2]

Since the Dictionary limits itself to the bare facts, it includes almost no analysis or historical context. Typically, it will say that a ship was transferred from one station to another on a specific date, but not why, and the reader must consult other sources for explanations. While most entries limit themselves to objective data, some use a pro-U.S. tone especially with reference to Cold War and World War II events. For example, the DANFS entry for the USS King (DLG-10) writes, "Operating with this mighty peacekeeping force, King helped to check Communist aggression in Southeast Asia".[1] Something on the order of a few hundred entries out of the thousands contain something along these lines, though to varying degrees. Some vessels, especially ones with proud records like USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Constitution, have articles strongly praising of their subjects' histories.

1. ^ Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships - Editorial Note. Retrieved on 2006-10-29.
2. ^ the Epopt, writing for Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2004-01-21). USS G-1 (SS-19½) Revision history. Wikipedia. Retrieved on 2007-07-13. “18:53, 21 January 2004 The Epopt ... (from DANFS)”)

• US Naval Historical Center DANFS Site (DANFS maintainer)
• Hazegray DANFS Site