Chrome dev tools loses network history

The "Preserve Log upon Navigation" status bar button in the Network panel should solve the issue:

Is there any way to get it to retain network history?

Yes and No. It may not retain the network history you want. (verified with chrome 62 in 2017-11-22)

If not is there another tool I could use?

https://www.charlesproxy.com/

Charles is an HTTP proxy / HTTP monitor / Reverse Proxy that enables a developer to view all of the HTTP and SSL / HTTPS traffic between their machine and the Internet. This includes requests, responses and the HTTP headers (which contain the cookies and caching information).