Navy All Hands Magazine
We believe it's important to make the Navy's history, as documented in All Hands, accessible to everyone. In January 2003, we completed a two-year project to archive every back issue (more than 80 years worth) in Adobe Acrobat® format. Since June 2002, every new issue is being offered in both Adobe Acrobat® format and the interactive Macromedia Flash® format.
At a glance
- Operator
- Defense Media Activity (for U.S. Navy Office of Information)
- Access
- Public
- Last updated
All Hands is the official magazine of the U.S. Navy, publishing news, features, and Sailor-focused stories online, along with a searchable digital archive of back issues. It is a public affairs and history resource, not a logistics system, but its archive preserves decades of Navy institutional record. The legacy directory URL for this listing (navy.mil/allhands.asp) is dead; the magazine now lives at allhands.navy.mil.
What it is
All Hands has been published in some form since 1922 and covers Navy news, fleet operations, and sailor life. The magazine's print edition ended in December 2011; it was relaunched as a digital, web-based publication in February 2013. The current site hosts ongoing feature content (Media, Features, Stories) alongside a decade-by-decade archive of historical issues. A prior two-year digitization project, completed in January 2003, converted more than eighty years of back issues to searchable Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format; newer issues have been offered in PDF since that project completed.
Who operates it
All Hands is produced by the Defense Media Activity, the DoD's joint media organization headquartered at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, on behalf of the U.S. Navy Office of Information. Defense Media Activity took over publishing operations from the former Naval Media Center in August 2011.
Access
All Hands is freely accessible to the public with no login, CAC, or account requirement. Current and archived issues, along with individual stories, are published at allhands.navy.mil; archived issues are also mirrored on the Defense Department's DVIDS (Digital Visual Information Distribution System) platform.
How logisticians use it
All Hands is not a logistics reference tool. Its practical relevance to logisticians is limited to background and institutional context — historical Navy news coverage, personnel and fleet stories, and general orientation to Navy culture — rather than any operational, supply, or technical data.
Related systems
All Hands sits alongside other DoD public affairs and history resources such as the Naval History and Heritage Command's archives and DVIDS, rather than alongside logistics systems proper.