This film made in 1962 shows the Naval Academy Preparatory School or NAPS. NAPS is the preparatory school for the United States Naval Academy and is located on Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island. The mission of the Naval Academy Preparatory School is “To enhance Midshipman Candidates’ moral, mental, and physical foundations to prepare them for success at the United States Naval Academy”. The film shows a more or less typical overview of NAPS, from morning assembly through daytime classes in scientific principles and math, homework (5:50), and so on. At 6:20 more pleasant activities are shown including a football game, at 6:50 printing invitations to the school’s Spring Dance, volleyball, baseball, tennis, track and field activities including shotput, lacrosse (7:40), golf (7:45), swimming, etc. At 8:20 students visit Washington, D.C. including the Lincoln Memorial. At 8:53 Pennsylvania Ave. is seen at night. The film ends with final exams and graduation.
The Naval Academy Preparatory School is the Navy’s fourth oldest school; only the Naval War College, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland are older. Informal preparatory classes began as early as 1915.
In 1918, the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels signed a provision to have up to 100 sailors from the fleet to be eligible for entry to the Academy. Due to the difficult nature of the Naval Academy’s entrance examination, then Undersecretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt (future 32nd President) also allowed for a school to be founded to prepare Sailors and Marines for entry.
The first official classes were established at Naval Station, Newport in Rhode Island and Naval Station Treasure Island / San Francisco in California in 1920. A year later the schools were moved to Norfolk, Virginia and San Diego, California. San Diego classes were later disestablished and NAPS classes remained solely in Norfolk until 1942, when the new Naval Academy Preparatory School opened in Newport, R.I.
In early 1943, NAPS moved to the United States Naval Training Center, Bainbridge, a facility of several hundred acres located above the Susquehanna River in Port Deposit, Maryland at the former Tome School campus, some 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Baltimore, Maryland. NAPS returned to Newport while the Bainbridge Center was temporarily inactive during a 15-month period around 1950. When Bainbridge was reactivated in 1951 because of the Korean War, the preparatory school returned to Maryland. In August 1974, NAPS returned to its permanent home in Newport.
From 1915 to the year 1968 NAPS was exclusively for Sailors and Marines who were of “Officer Caliber” but lacked the academic foundation for the rigors at The United States Naval Academy. In 1968, The first male “Direct Entries” were admitted to NAPS. Following the congressional authorization of women to attend all military service academies, women were admitted in 1976.
Although NAPS primarily serves as an institution to prepare Midshipman candidates to attend The United States Naval Academy; from the years 1958 to 2008 and again from 2016 to the present day, it also began to prepare Cadet candidates for the United States Air Force Academy (1958–1961), the United States Coast Guard Academy (1979–2008, 2016-2017) and from 1991 to 2004, Midshipman candidates for the United States Merchant Marine Academy.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
