A Corlette author who has dedicated years of his life to documenting the Australia's Naval history and the achievements of its people has now himself received a honour for his work.
Naval historian Ian Pfennigwerth has received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2023 Australia Day Honours List for "service to military history".
It follows Mr Pfennigwerth's 35-year career in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and 13 years as a naval author who has had 13 works detailing different aspects of Australia's naval history published between 2005 to 2018.
Mr Pfennigwerth's last two books, titled Bravo Zulu, which translates to Well Done, are devoted to the stories of the naval men and women who were presented with imperial, Australian or foreign honours and awards between 1900-2014.
It was groundbreaking work, especially as the official records Mr Pfennigwerth and his research team expected to find when they set out on their journey in 2009 were not where they were supposed to be.
"Unfortunately, the national archives are accessible only up to about 1960 and then we ran into a brick wall when trying to get modern day records from the Department of Defence, who cited 'privacy' issues as reasons for refusing our requests," Mr Pfennigwerth told the Examiner in 2019.
"The key to the project's success was finding the recipients - some 4000 of them from across Australia and overseas - and persuading them to cooperate with our research."
The vast majority, but not all, are Australian Navy personnel who collected service medals, including OAMs, which Mr Pfennigwerth is now a recipient of.
Mr Pfennigwerth said that from the day he set out on this mammoth task to write Bravo Zulu the challenges came thick and fast. Even after many of the recipients had been discovered, they faced further hurdles making contact with the veterans, or in the cases where the recipient had died, their families.
"Some would not talk, some were suspicious and some were outright hostile. I guess we were able to document about 70 per cent of the total number of all those who received awards in Volume 1 [1900-1974] and closer to 85 per cent in Volume 2 [1975-2004]," he said.
Mr Pfennigwerth and wife Elizabeth retired and purchased a home in Port Stephens in 1999.
It followed Mr Pfennigwerth's career in the RAN from 1958-2002 and as a visiting fellow at ADFA from 2010-2014.
Mr Pfennigwerth received a number of awards and medals during his service including the Australian Active Service Medal 1945-75, General Service Medal 1962, Australian Service Medal 1945-1975 and Defence Force Service Medal with third clasp 1990.
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