 The United States Navy Combat Art Collection is considered a national treasure. Begun in 1941, it now consists of more than 4,000 paintings and drawings, and represents the work of more than 180 artists. Since 1946, these paintings have been on almost constant display, in small towns and large cities, in America and abroad. The paintings depict the United States Navy, not only at the frontiers of war, but at the frontiers of science as well. Each painting and drawing in the collection is a representation of an event witnessed directly by the artist. Under a continuing program, artists in uniform and civilian artists travel to the far corners of the world. They live with Navy units at sea and ashore, observing and recording the plane sailings, foreign ports, explorations, launchings, and the actions of combat. Each artist depicts a scene in his own way. Techniques and styles vary. In some instances, climate or the circumstances of battle dictate the medium to be used. In the South Pacific, for example, oil paints were almost unusable. In rainy seasons and monsoons, watercolors were replaced by crayons and inks. The film that follows is composed of pictures chosen from the collection and combined to form a moving image of the men who comprise the United States Navy. Artists have always been drawn to the sea and to the ships that sail upon it, brilliant gravings and paintings that has been possible to create a pictorial history of the United States Navy, an over-fighting craft from the wooden sailing ships of revolutionary times to the era of steam power and the Civil War's ironclads. During the Second World War, the Combat Artist Corps was created. The artists in the Navy were joined together officially. Combat Artist goes where the Navy goes. He accumulates visual impressions, notes the shape and movement of a patrol boat on the Long Tau River. The gestures and actions of a catapult officer. The faces of men in combat. The moments of rest and the time of waiting. The incurious glances of civilians caught up in the field of battle. The resigned attitudes of enemy prisoners. The thrust of a demolition unit as it hits the beach at low tide. The embraces of homecoming and reunion. He may be seen on the bridge of a destroyer, watching a refueling operation at sea. On the deck of a carrier. He may find himself with an Apollo recovery team in the Pacific. Searching uncharted coral reefs with the underwater swimmers. Boarding a transport helicopter headed for some remote landing zone with the first wave of an amphibious assault. He's at the side of the signalman, the gunner's mate. The frogman. He knows the same tensions, the same fears. He displays the same courage. Exercises the same caution and cunning. But at the same time, his eyes alert to a different kind of reality. To the contrasts of shapes, colors and textures. To the changing patterns of movement and light. To the perspective of objects in space. The conflagrations of battle illuminate its awful climaxes. At the same time, they impress themselves upon the artist's mind as trails and explosions of yellow and red pigment. The action is all around him. Above, below, in front, behind. It is also on another level of consciousness. Flattened between the strict boundaries of a sketch pad or stretched canvas. A complex equipment. The Navy is men. A personal eye of a recording camera. But with the eye of a man among other men. He adds something of his own humanity to the portrayal of these men. A thousand different jobs it must do. Some simple. Some intricate. Some humdrum. Some daring. The artist is there to render them elaborately or in rough sketch. A few swift notations. Or reconstructed later in tranquility. It is, in a sense, a mobile island. Communication binds the fleet together. Some of the means are as old as the Navy itself. Others, the complex tools of modern technology. For the Navy is an extension of the technology of today's civilization. It demands refined skills. And men must master them to master their ships. Like a city, it's a profusion of activities and of images. Medic tensions of takeoff and landing. Setting down an aircraft on a ship that for all its size is just a dot on the sea. A pitching, rolling, undersized airfield. Medical officers and corpsmen work below deck in elaborate antiseptic hospitals. Or with sparse efficiency in the muddy fields of combat. The space age has created new jobs for the Navy. The recovery of space capsules and astronauts. Smiles of heroes. The pageantry of the Navy's welcome. There are the times aboard ship or on shore when the work is done, but not for the artist. For these forms and aspects of relaxation, of diversion, of personal commitment, are as much a part of Navy life as any other. The ship of metal is an artificial environment that contrasts sharply with the sea where it moves. As precise and controlled as the ocean is volatile, the ship is hard edged as the waters are fluid. At no time is the contrast between ship and sea more apparent than in a storm. When these two forms engage in battle, it is not an easy thing to transform the change and movement of the sea into a frozen image on campus. The artist adds the image of the ship to lend a sense of scale to express the ocean's vast power and the drama of the storm. Navy ships move into every climate, touch every continent. The ports of Kahl are often the most remote of places. Anchorage is rimmed by cliffs of granite, lush green of the tropics, or glacial ice. The men of the sea wherever they go ashore, whether it be on an Antarctic ice flow or down the boulevards and side streets of European cities. The men of the sea see the world, and the artist sees them there. There is no port of Kahl like Homeport. The months away are long, the time of homecoming a common dream. But last the men of the sea are ashore in their own land, rain or shine. The moment of homecoming is radiant. The purpose of any Navy is...