Canadian Naval Technical History Association

Administrative History

The Canadian Naval Technical History Association (CNTHA) is a volunteer organization working in support of the Directorate of History and Heritage (DHH) effort to preserve Canada's naval technical history. A prime purpose of the CNTHA is to make its information available to researchers. In the early 1990s it established the Naval Technical History Project to locate and correlate data concerning the technical advances made by the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in the years following the Second World War. The purpose was the provision of a data bank for DHH in the preparation of Volume III of the history of the RCN.

Scope and Content

Collection consists of material supporting the Canadian Naval Technical History Association's (CNTHA) Naval Technical History Project in regards to the technical advances made by the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in the years following the Second World War. Includes books, articles, papers, booklets, notes and various other documents covering a wide variety of subjects, including shipbuilding, ship repairing, Canadian patrol frigates, engineering, helicopters, hydrofoils, sonar, history, organization, personnel, submarines, training and weapons. Also includes books and magazines pertaining to marine and naval architecture, technical drawings of CRESCENTand CRUSADER during the 1950s and 1960s, a United Aircraft of Canada design and acquisition proposal regarding the DDH 280 class main propulsion machinery, transcripts of interviews by the Canadian Navy Defence Industrial Base (CANDIB), and developments in Canadian naval sonar technology. There are 6 series:
I. Naval Technical History Project material
II. Marine/Naval Architecture Books and Magazines
III. Ships’ Technical Drawings
IV. DDH 280 Class Main Propulsion Machinery Design and Acquisition Proposal
V. Canadian Navy Defence Industrial Base Interviews
VI. Supporting Documents for Item 449 [Canadian Naval Sonar Development]