John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren (1809-1870)
Rear-Admiral in the U.S. Navy & Inventor of the "Dahlgren Gun"
He was born in Philadelphia and was commissioned into the U.S. Navy in 1826. In the Civil War, he was appointed Commander of the Washington Navy Yard where he established the Bureau of Ordnance. He launched significant advances in gunnery which included his invention of the "Dahlgren Gun" (see images), a smoothbore howitzer adaptable to both ship and shore that he improved to become a cast-iron muzzle-loading cannon with vastly increased range and accuracy - the U.S. Navy's standard armament. In 1863, he took command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron with the rank of Rear-Admiral, helping William Tecumseh Sherman to secure Savannah.
