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The Navy Cross is the second highest
decoration for valor in war and evolved from the Certificate
of Merit of 1847. This certificate was intended to be
conferred only on private soldiers; NCOs received commissions
for outstanding service and heroism; officers received brevet
promotions. Authority to award the
Distinguished Service Cross is held by the Commanding
General of a US Army Force serving in the rank of General and
the Chief of Staff, Army and may not be further delegated.
Successive awards are denoted by Oak Leaf Clusters.
THE
YEARS of the "Great War" were not easy ones for the men and women in the naval
service. The Herculean task of transporting and escorting the hundreds of
thousands of troops of the American Expeditionary Force to Europe, the growing
pains of fielding new aviation and submarine elements and the savage fighting of
our sailors and Marines on battlefields across France all lay at the feet of the
naval service. Along with this came an increase in the size of the naval service
to its largest at that time, and the task of working hand-in-hand with Allied
counterparts.
New to this experience was the European custom of one nation decorating
heroes of another nation. The United States, with the Medal of Honor as its sole
decoration, was caught unprepared not only for this custom, but also had no
appropriate award to recognize heroism of a level less than that which would
merit the Medal of Honor and no decoration to reward the myriad acts of
meritorious non-combat service that the war would spur.
The U.S. Army shared this dilemma and with the aid of President Woodrow
Wilson and the Congress in early and mid-1918 instituted its Distinguished
Service Cross and Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) with clear guidelines for
the award of the Distinguished Service Cross for combat heroism and the DSM
award for distinguished non-combat duty in a position of great responsibility.
This pair was available in time for awarding during World War I.
Parallel awards were created a year later for the Navy and Marine Corps,
months after the armistice and amid the massive demobilization of our forces.
The Navy Cross was established by
Act of Congress (Public Law 253, 65th Congress),
approved on February 4, 1919. The Navy Cross has been
in effect since April 6, 1917.
The Navy Cross was
designed by James Earl Fraser (1876-1953),
a distinguished sculptor, member of the nation's Fine
Arts Commisson and designer of the obverse of the
Victory Medal and an early version of the Navy
Distinguished Service Medal. The Navy Cross' arguable
resemblance to Great Britain's Navy Distinguished
Service Cross is noteworthy, but not elaborated upon
in any records. Fraser experimented with the image of
a World War I-era destroyer on the medal, but finally
opted for the more timeless, flowing lines of a
15th-century caraval or sailing ship.
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