Parade apologizes for Nazi warship image used in Navy chef feature

Graphic image used in the May 19 issue of Parade Magazine piece on Derrick Davenport — named Chef of the Year by the Pentagon. (Parade Magazine)

Parade Magazine is apologizing for a design error that depicted a Nazi battleship in a story about an award winning U.S. Navy chef.

The magazine’s top editor Maggie Murphy told USNI News that she was sorry for the mistake on a story that featured senior chief culinary specialist Derrick Davenport, a chef for the Joint Chiefs Chairman. With the tag reading, "...some of the best cooks in the country aren't in restaurants or on TV," the piece about Davenport, who won the gold medal in the March 38th Annual Military Culinary Arts Competition at Fort Lee, Va., used a collection of ship silhouettes that included a World War II era Nazi battleship -- the Bismarck-class.

“Mea culpa,” wrote Murphy in an email to USNI News. “I regret we didn’t dig deeper into the exact descriptions of the graphics we used for our story on Derrick Davenport this past Sunday,” explaining that the silhouettes used were pulled from a collection of naval images that didn't distinguish between U.S. and foreign ships.

Some readers like Christopher Cavas, a writer for Defense News on Sunday, instantly recognized the error when the piece was distributed via the Sunday papers.  He said he hoped that the mistake wouldn't take away from the heart warming tale of Davenport’s rise to award winning chef and the creations from his tiny kitchen aboard the attack sub USS Annapolis.

“We hope you’ll join us in celebrating the accomplishments of the Navy’s Derrick Davenport and his colleagues, and move on,” Murphy wrote to USNI News.