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During World War II, the U.S. Naval Academy went into high gear to produce quality officer material for the two-ocean war.
Nearly all of the war’s key naval leaders—including William Halsey, Class of 1904; Ernest King, ’01; Chester Nimitz, ’05; and Raymond Spruance, ’06—were graduates. Altogether, alumni from 54 classes participated in the war.
Between 1941 and 1945, the academy contributed more than 7,500 officers to the fleet. The losses for the classes of 1934, 1935, 1936, and 1937 were 12, 14, 16, and 14 percent respectively.
The war not only served to validate the academy’s very existence, but also brought about tremendous change.
The war period and the years immediately thereafter led to the creation of new curricula, new facilities, and new ideas about naval education. Expanded classes of midshipmen from different demographic groups and new faculty recruited from civilian schools and the ranks of wartime veterans changed the institutional culture of the academy.
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