USNRF

History

As successful as the state naval militias were in the Spanish–American War, which made the United States a world power, events unfolding in Europe following the turn of the century demonstrated that a modern war at sea required a federal naval reserve force. The first formally funded naval reserve force was organized around the United States Merchant Marine with the formation of the Merchant Marine Reserve, then called the Naval Auxiliary Reserve, in 1913. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and his assistant, a young New Yorker named Franklin D. Roosevelt, launched a campaign in Congress to appropriate funding for such a force. Their efforts brought passage of legislation on 3 March 1915, creating the United States Naval Reserve Force (USNRF), with its first official members hunting enemy U-boats from biplanes. Officially founded on 29 August 1916, the USNRF broadened enlistment requirements and placed reservists into six groups according to their experience, occupation, and operational region. By the end of the war, USNRF sailors made up 54 percent of the U.S. naval force, including nearly 12,000 women.