WNHA BOARD MEMBERS
SAM J. TANGREDI
President
Dr. Tangredi is the Leidos Chair of Future Warfare Studies, Director of the Institute for Future Warfare Studies, and Professor of National, Naval and Maritime Strategy in the Center for Naval Warfare Studies of the U.S. Naval War College. He has wide experience as a strategic planner and director of strategic planning teams. Sam has published five books, over 150 journal articles, and numerous reports and presentations for a wide range of government and academic organizations. His latest edited book, AI at War: How Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning Are Changing Naval Warfare will be published in Winter 2021. His previous writings have won professional literature awards including the U.S. Naval Institute’s Arleigh Burke prize and U.S. Navy League’s Alfred Thayer Mahan Award. He is a leading national expert on anti-access/area denial strategies and access to the global commons, and is author of Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies (Naval Institute Press, 2013). Dr. Tangredi is a retired U.S. Navy Captain who held command at sea.
VINCENT P. O'HARA
Vice President
Vincent P. O’Hara is a co-founder of the Western Naval History Association. He is an independent historian and the author of twelve books or edited volumes, most recently, Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory, (Naval Institute 2015), Clash of Fleets (with Len Heinz, Naval Institute 2017), and Six Victories: North Africa, Malta, and the Mediterranean Convoy War November 1941-March 1942 (Naval Institute 2019). He was assistant editor of World War II at Sea: an encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO 2012) and has published in magazine and journals including Naval War College Review, Naval History, Warship, MHQ, Storia MILITARE, and others.
O’Hara was the Naval Institute Press author of the year for 2015. He was an invited participant in 75th Anniversary ceremonies for Operation Torch held in Algiers and Oran, Algeria in November 2017. He has spoken at the Harold C. Deutsch WWII Round Table, Minneapolis; the USS Midway Museum; the U.S. Navy Hampton Roads Museum, Norfolk; the U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Association, the Universitié d’Oran, Oran, Algeria, the Center for Maghreb Studies, Oran, Algeria, and other venues.
O’Hara holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley and lives in Chula Vista, California.
STEPHEN MCLAUGHLIN
Secretary
Steve McLaughlin is a founding member of the WNHA. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1979 and a master’s in library science in 1981. For 35 years he worked as a librarian for the San Francisco Public Library, retiring in 2017. In his youth he developed a fondness for unusual ships, which eventually led to The Hybrid Warship: The Amalgamation of Big Guns and Aircraft (Naval Institute Press, 1991), written with the late naval aviation historian R.D. Layman. When glastnost unleashed a flood of publications on little-known Russian warships, he decided to learn the language, which ultimately led to his book Russian & Soviet Battleships (Naval Institute Press, 2003). He has also published numerous articles on Russian warships in Warship International and the annual Warship (London: Osprey Publishing). When his friend Bill Schleihauf tragically passed away before finishing his annotated edition of the controversial (and long secret) British Naval Staff’s study of Jutland, he completed the project, which was published as Jutland: The Naval Staff Appreciation (diagrams by John Jordan; Seaforth Publishing, 2016). He is currently working on a book on Russian and Soviet cruisers, 1880–1960.
CYNTHIA WATSON
Board Member
Cynthia Watson is Dean of Faculty & Academic Programs at the National War College where she began teaching in 1992. She earned a Master's in Economic History from the London School of Economics and a Doctorate in International Studies from the University of Notre Dame. Her undergraduate institution, the University of Missouri Kansas City, honoured her as Alumna of the Year in 2011. Watson teaches courses on modernising China and its effects on the global system. She has written on a range of strategic topics, Combatant Commands, Military Education, nation-building, and her 2002 edition of U.S. National Security won CHOICE'S designation as a Book of the Year. Watson taught previously at Loyola Chicago, serving also as Assistant Dean for Social Sciences, and at Ithaca College. She began her career as a staff auditor at the U.S. General Accounting Office and worked for the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Government Information & Individual Rights. She is certified as Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic in Spanish and English. Watson also serves on several professional boards.
KARL ZINGHEIM
Board Member
Karl Zingheim is a WNHA co-founder. He serves as the Staff Historian for the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, the establishment of which he was an early advocate, and as an adjunct professor of military history at San Diego State University. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served in both afloat and in instructional positions ashore. After leaving active duty, he earned a Master’s in Military History at Norwich University in Vermont. His published works include a chapter contributed to the U.S. Naval Institute’s Battle of Leyte Gulf at 75, and articles for publications such as WWII Naval Journal and Mains’l Haul. He is currently compiling material for a biography of Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley.
John Burtt
Membership Director
John holds a masters in both nuclear engineering and military history and is recently retired from his job working with U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion. He has written extensively on military topics for Strategy & Tactics, World at War, and Modern War magazines. He edited the wargame review journal Paper Wars for more than two decades. John's most recent book is Operation C3 Hitler's Plan to Invade Malta 1942 (Pen and Sword, 2023). He is a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps and a Vietnam Veteran. John resides in Utah somewhere south of Salt Lake City.