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For the WWII Nerds - Best admirals voted by panel of peers in 1942


Macanudo

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On 11/12/2023 at 2:55 PM, UpperWestside said:

A fire happens I can understand. Seems insane, but fires happen. I cannot understand how the United States did not have any back-up archive of these records. I get this was before the computer age, but man that comes across as odd to me.

On 11/12/2023 at 2:59 PM, RPM said:

It was 1973. Very pre-digital copy. Most records were original or carbon copies (and flammable).

Yeah, there's a lot going on with what happened in '73, and yet not a lot - basically a worst-case scenario where the contents were extremely flammable and they didn't have a sprinkler system (and smoke detectors were lacking at that time, some places had them, some didn't).  The lack of sprinklers was by design, and is a debate that rages to this day, over whether a faulty sprinkler system could cause as much damage as a fire.  Some archival storage places just have firewalls and smoke detectors.

These were the main losses:

  • 80% loss to records of U.S. Army personnel discharged November 1, 1912, to January 1, 1960
  • 75% loss to records of U.S. Air Force personnel discharged September 25, 1947, to January 1, 1964, with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E.
  • Some U.S. Army Reserve personnel who performed their initial active duty for training in the late 1950s but who received final discharge as late as 1964.

They can reconstruct some record info, especially since millions of records were with the VA at the time.

Quote

 

A massive effort to restore destroyed service records began in 1974. In most cases where a military record has been presumed destroyed, NPRC is able to reconstruct basic service information, such as military date of entry, date of discharge, character of service, and final rank. Information is still being recovered from burnt files into the 2020s, especially with the aid of infrared cameras that can read blackened paper.

 

I have seen conspiracy theories about the fire, but it's all pretty much bullshit. The government was not trying to get out of covering veterans' healthcare from the wars  by burning up the records (and as said, millions of records were already on loan to the VA), and they've always had Congress and various veterans groups breathing down their necks and watching their every move.  They weren't trying to cover up some top secret bullshit stuff, because top secret bullshit stuff was already stored elsewhere, plus it was top secret, so it wasn't going to be suddenly leaked to the world, and would not have been in with personnel files (those files would be stored elsewhere, and not in a general personnel archives) just waiting to be stumbled across by some hapless archivist.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Burton_Stephen_Lancaster_(1913-1994)_discharge_certificate_(WD_AGO).jpg

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On 11/16/2023 at 11:23 AM, Gatorubet said:

My father and uncle’s records are among those lost.  Damn shame.  Dad‘s war experience was amazing, defending St Vith during the battle of the bulge and being among the first to cross the Rhine river at Remagen.

My uncle was a member of the Devil’s Brigade who served in the Aleutians and Italy.  and they were experts in a lot of things, paratroopers, ski troops, mountain troops, demolition experts, and they received martial arts training from the head of Hong Kong security.

Maybe your uncle served with @Armybrat's dad in the Aluetians.  AB has posted some interesting photos from that battlefield.

 

On 11/16/2023 at 11:23 AM, Gatorubet said:

My uncle was a bad ass.  I wish those records existed. I have heard rumors that the records were not all destroyed in the fire, but that the government never got around to fixing the documents that were water damaged- and they are sitting somewhere in a clump

They've been working on them since the 70s, and as mentioned in a previous post, are starting to go over them with infrared cameras/scanners to pick up text that was unreadable (similar to what they are doing with old Egyptian and Middle Eastern documents from thousands of years ago that are unreadable.)

 

 

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On 11/12/2023 at 3:24 PM, RPM said:

Individual vet group historians posting records online was how I was able to track down the LST my Dad served on at Iwo. It wasn't much other than a ship's roster but it was something. 

Military ship nerds are amazing.  Somebody got ahold of a bunch of ship manifests/rosters for troop transports during WWI and put them online, and I was able to track three of my great-grandfathers going to and from Europe, along with more info than I needed about the ships themselves.

On 11/12/2023 at 3:30 PM, UpperWestside said:

That sounds like the route my friend is going to have to go. He just wants a stronger connection to his past as he gets older now and has grandkids. He loves history so knowing what his grandfather did during the war is important to him. 

On 11/15/2023 at 4:48 PM, Felix said:

My grandfathers records were lost in this fire as well.

I would go through everything that exists from your grandfathers (or friends' grandfather) in terms of military documents, photos, letters (addresses are important), and get a timeline built up of where they were at, what units they were in, etc , even if it's just a spreadsheet.  Addresses from letters maybe tough as many were using armed forces PO Boxes that would not reveal deployments/etc., but even some of those boxes are listed online and who they were serving (not individuals but theaters or larger units).

WWI saw almost 5 million in uniform, and WW2 saw over 16 million or so in uniform.  After WWI, the military shrank down to a few hundred thousand, and after WWII, the Army went from 14 million men to less than 1 million.  That meant a whole shitload of units were deactivated, which meant that records were sent to central federal repositories, or in some cases, such as National Guard, to state repositories (although copies should have been sent to the federal archives).

Also, some miscellaneous stuff, like unit histories, unit newsletters, photos, etc, didn't end up in those personnel record repositories and instead ended up at the parent bases (or when bases were closed, at other nearby bases) or in museums or other archives (such as the National Archives).  In some cases, you will have to get lucky and hope that relatives of those who served would post the unit histories or newsletters or whatever online.

If you can pin down actual units, do a search online - it can be such a pain in the ass, but can pay off.  I have been able to track some relatives' WW2 activities through things like newsletters that were created by the men themselves (squadron or even flight/company level) as well as photos and rosters that people have posted online.

I have some WWI photos of a great-grandfather in a training unit that somebody posted online, and they didn't have a relative in that unit, but they were actually in the unit in the 1960s (in the 1910s it was a coastal artillery unit, 1960s it was an air-defense artillery unit) and they had saved the unit's history and photos going back to the 1890s, from being trashed/destroyed when the unit was deactivated.

If you know the larger units they were in (division/group), people have been uploading all of the stuff that military historians put together for the DoD after WW2 was over:

https://archive.org/search?query=us+army+history+world+war+2

It's best to search by squadron/battalion/regiment/division on there, and the government spent a lot of money documenting the histories of a lot of units - they had active-duty historians recording battles as they happened.

 

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17 minutes ago, UpperWestside said:

That is incredibly helpful information. I will pass that onto my friend. Thank you for taking the time to share it!

Thanks, there is a pretty serious interest in African-American soldiers during the war, so it's possible he can turn something up, but basically needs to get everything together and try and make a timeline and then go prowling the web - lots of people have put small-scale stuff up on personal sites that cover the war (company or battalion histories, etc.).

And there's always Fold3.com, which is Ancestry.com's all-military record site (but again, impacted by the 1973 fire), as well as their https://www.newspapers.com website.  And you can check if there are available newspapers for their areas - many newspapers in the 1940s listed returning soldiers and what units they were in, etc.

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A little over an hour ago in the far flung reaches of the Pacific, 80 years have now passed since the Marines declared the Tarawa Atoll securely in American hands and thus ending major hostilities in the Battle of Tarawa. It was the first time a major amphibious assault had taken place and the Marines paid dearly for that square mile of land with an airstrip on Betio. 
 

This was part of the learning curve for American war planners where all the best laid plans can go sideways once the battle starts. I don’t need to go into all the details of why since it should be all pretty well known by most everyone here. The carnage and death to get that atoll paid huge dividends in how future amphibious assaults were conducted like D-Day in Normandy seven months later. From this we had UDT put together to blast out paths on future barrier reefs so the soldiers had clear lanes to get through to the beaches on the island hopping campaign. A whole lots of really brave young men never got to fulfill their dreams because of those 76 hours. Eddie Albert was there on the beaches getting wounded Marines back to the ships. I think he was quoted many times about that battle being the seminal moment of his life. He was more proud to be able to serve his country than any acting job he ever had.
 

I want to visit Tarawa one day. I am sure others here probably do as well. 

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21 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

A little over an hour ago in the far flung reaches of the Pacific, 80 years have now passed since the Marines declared the Tarawa Atoll securely in American hands and thus ending major hostilities in the Battle of Tarawa. It was the first time a major amphibious assault had taken place and the Marines paid dearly for that square mile of land with an airstrip on Betio. 
 

This was part of the learning curve for American war planners where all the best laid plans can go sideways once the battle starts. I don’t need to go into all the details of why since it should be all pretty well known by most everyone here. The carnage and death to get that atoll paid huge dividends in how future amphibious assaults were conducted like D-Day in Normandy seven months later. From this we had UDT put together to blast out paths on future barrier reefs so the soldiers had clear lanes to get through to the beaches on the island hopping campaign. A whole lots of really brave young men never got to fulfill their dreams because of those 76 hours. Eddie Albert was there on the beaches getting wounded Marines back to the ships. I think he was quoted many times about that battle being the seminal moment of his life. He was more proud to be able to serve his country than any acting job he ever had.
 

I want to visit Tarawa one day. I am sure others here probably do as well. 

Tarawa and Peleliu are the two battles that really struck me when as a kid I started getting into history and the war, particularly in the Pacific. Many years later, when I moved into my first house, I discovered that the elderly man across the street had been a radio operator on the Essex, and he told me harrowing stories of being patched into the Marine tankers' radios ashore on Betio and listening to the battle live.

Betio today is one of the most densely populated places on Earth - the atoll is nearly completely covered with buildings - and, while standing on the beaches looking out at the infamous reefs is certainly moving, you'll likely be quite disappointed in the rest of it. Peleliu is much closer to what it was back then, and Palau in general is a lovely place. 

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23 hours ago, flatdawgs said:

Tarawa and Peleliu are the two battles that really struck me when as a kid I started getting into history and the war, particularly in the Pacific. Many years later, when I moved into my first house, I discovered that the elderly man across the street had been a radio operator on the Essex, and he told me harrowing stories of being patched into the Marine tankers' radios ashore on Betio and listening to the battle live.

Betio today is one of the most densely populated places on Earth - the atoll is nearly completely covered with buildings - and, while standing on the beaches looking out at the infamous reefs is certainly moving, you'll likely be quite disappointed in the rest of it. Peleliu is much closer to what it was back then, and Palau in general is a lovely place. 

Thank you for sharing that story. I really do appreciate hearing about encounters like this where you meet living history. 
 

I had googled Betio not too long ago and saw how covered it looked for such a tiny area. I think just standing there on the beach would be sufficient to paying a measure of respect to the men that perished there. I never had the discipline in my younger days to serve (I absolutely knew if I had accepted the recruiting overtures in high school to join the army that it would’ve ended poorly for me.) These men though willingly went halfway around the world pissed that their country had been attacked by the IJN almost two years earlier. That’s courage.
 

Peleliu and Palau are both on the radar as well. There’s a book I hope to read before New Year’s Day about Peleliu. Thank you for letting me know about what I will encounter there. I’m really thankful to you and others that can share so much information in this thread. 

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Morison's History of United States Naval Operations in WWII is a must read for any Pacific theater nerds and it is pretty exhaustive albeit outdated.   He did have access to a lot of good early material.  I think Ian Toll's Pacific War trilogy is very good too and shorter than Morison's.  

 Of topic from WWII, Toll also wrote Six Frigates which is about the founding of the Navy.   Definitely worth reading.

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On 11/25/2023 at 10:32 AM, Macanudo said:

Morison's History of United States Naval Operations in WWII is a must read for any Pacific theater nerds and it is pretty exhaustive albeit outdated.   He did have access to a lot of good early material.  I think Ian Toll's Pacific War trilogy is very good too and shorter than Morison's.  

 Of topic from WWII, Toll also wrote Six Frigates which is about the founding of the Navy.   Definitely worth reading.

I read Toll’s trilogy this summer. It was fantastic. He’s local to me here in New York so I hope to catch him doing a Q&A. He and James Hornfischer (RIP) both have excellent books. Wish Hornfischer had not succumbed to cancer two years ago or he would’ve had many more books on the Pacific War. 
 

I am probably more partial to writers born after the war or that wrote well after the war ended like John Toland. I will still likely read his life’s work at some point. 

 

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  • 1 month later...

This book was a necessary, but hard read. I just cannot fathom the level of suffering inflicted on these soldiers so needlessly by MacArthur and his cabal of yes men. General Harding got completely shafted for taking care of his completely emaciated force. I try to imagine crossing the Owen Stanley range while at the same time being completely unprepared to do so by SWPAC. They even were in Louisiana in training and no one thought it might be good to get some swamp training in just in case they were not sent to Europe.
 

If there is ever one enduring indictment that you can always lay at the feet of MacArthur it is what he did to these men at Buna. Absolutely shameful on his part. Eichelberger was not much better when he relieved Harding, but he at least showed remorse and wasn’t flat out lying in press communiques about what was actually transpiring in the 7th circle of hell in that jungle. Highly suggest reading this book. Heartbreaking read overall.IMG_9792.thumb.jpeg.988445292e0b7130e9cbddbb2893200b.jpeg

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14 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

This book was a necessary, but hard read. I just cannot fathom the level of suffering inflicted on these soldiers so needlessly by MacArthur and his cabal of yes men. General Harding got completely shafted for taking care of his completely emaciated force. I try to imagine crossing the Owen Stanley range while at the same time being completely unprepared to do so by SWPAC. They even were in Louisiana in training and no one thought it might be good to get some swamp training in just in case they were not sent to Europe.
 

If there is ever one enduring indictment that you can always lay at the feet of MacArthur it is what he did to these men at Buna. Absolutely shameful on his part. Eichelberger was not much better when he relieved Harding, but he at least showed remorse and wasn’t flat out lying in press communiques about what was actually transpiring in the 7th circle of hell in that jungle. Highly suggest reading this book. Heartbreaking read overall.IMG_9792.thumb.jpeg.988445292e0b7130e9cbddbb2893200b.jpeg

Well, that and ignoring all the warning signs that the North Koreans were going to head south in June 1950 and then the same thing happening with the Chinese in October 1950.   His ego wrote checks his body couldn't cash.

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On 1/18/2024 at 11:24 AM, Macanudo said:

Well, that and ignoring all the warning signs that the North Koreans were going to head south in June 1950 and then the same thing happening with the Chinese in October 1950.   His ego wrote checks his body couldn't cash.

So much of his public persona was a flat out fabrication, but America needed good news in early 1942. While he was really intelligent I will never get past Buna with him. His clownshow during the Korean War never happens of the truth of what he did at Buna had come to light. That should’ve had him sent stateside and he never should have had any command after. He was Miles Browning with more tact and cache than Browning could’ve ever hoped to have. He played the political games to perfection. If only his ability to command in the field was that good. 

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On 1/17/2024 at 8:57 PM, InkaUtexas said:

A great book. My mentor's father was a young LT in that campaign. Damn the stories.

Reading about the Ghost Mountain Boys really hit me emotionally. Their will to live was off-the-charts and that they continued to fight while being 30-50 lbs lighter than when they began their journey while also having any of 8-10 different diseases is incredible. I will never do anything in life as heroic or courageous as what these men did. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have posted on here that I work as a server here in NYC. That gives me the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. Earlier this week my last table was two women from Auckland. One was a flight attendant on a three day layover and she brought her friend along as it was their first time to see NYC. The flight attendant is a huge history buff and she finds American history really interesting.
 

One of the things she related was Auckland having a street named after Admiral Halsey, which she thinks is pretty cool. The other was that recently as she was flying over the Pacific the captain of the plane asked her to come to the front to see the view in front of them. She got to see Midway which was something she considered to be really awesome because she is fully aware of what transpired there. It was cool to be able to know that what those men did in the Pacific is still remembered by people well removed generationally from that era. They told me that there is not a lot of historical artifacts in New Zealand from the Pacific War, but they said that all the same a trip there would be a great experience to see the history and natural beauty. Just thought I’d share that story.

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Having been in New Zealand on Anzac Day, it’s really something. We caught a rugby match that day and the pregame ceremony was incredibly somber. Pretty stark contrast to here and Memorial Day. 

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12 hours ago, drt said:

Having been in New Zealand on Anzac Day, it’s really something. We caught a rugby match that day and the pregame ceremony was incredibly somber. Pretty stark contrast to here and Memorial Day. 

thats because there isnt a single battle campaign Americans have ever been in (except the Civil War when we were fighting each other), in which 15% of the total deaths in a war came from that first campaign:

Both countries had just technically become semi-independent nations in 1901 and 1907, and Galliploi gobsmacked the shit out of the 2 countries. 

It took more than a week for the first casualty numbers to get back to Australia and they became a fucking torrent over the next 2 weeks.  

To try to give some equivalence to show the impact on the U.S:

U.S. had a little over 400k battle deaths in WW2.... We would have had to have had 55,000 men killed (not wounded) at either Pearl Harbor (2,400) or the Battle of Kasserine Pass (3,300) to relatively show how much of a first battle loss that would have been to the Anzacs

 

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