Naval Ceremony for USS Eagle This Tuesday

From the April 20, 2024, Portland (Maine) Press Herald "Navy vessel sunk off Maine coast during World War II to be remembered at ceremony" by Joel Lawlor.

The ceremony will be held at 11 am Tuesday, 79 years to the day since the USS Eagle 56 was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Cape Elizabeth.

The U.S. Navy will host a wreath-laying ceremony Tuesday, April23, to commemorate the sinking of the USS Eagle 56, a Navy patrol vessel that was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in the waning days of the war with Germany.

Forty-nine sailors died in the sinking off the coast of Cape Elizabeth (Maine) on April 23, 1945-- exactly 70 years ago Tuesday.  Just 13 were rescued.

The ceremony is set to begin at11 a.m. at Fort Williams Park, will be at the plaque memorializing the USS Eagle, which is located on the south side of the Portland Head Light driveway.

--GreGen

Search for Richard Bong's Plane-- Part 4: His Death

Richard Bong married Marge Battendahl in 1945 and was assigned duty as a test pilot in Burbank, California, after his three combat tours in the South Pacific.

He was killed on August 6, 1945, when the P-80 jet fighter he was testing crashed. That was the same day that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Vattendahl was 21 when he died and went on to become a model and magazine  publisher in Los Angeles.  She died in September 2003 in Superior.

The search for Bong's plane comes just weeks after a deep sea exploration team searching for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's lost plane in the South Pacific said it captured sonar image that "appears to be Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra aircraft.

--GreGen

Search for Richard Bong's Plane-- Part 3

Richard Bong's Medal of Honor reads: "For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action in the Southwest Pacific area from October 10 to November 15, 1944.

"Though assigned to duty as gunnery instructor and neither required nor expected to perform combat duty, Major Bong voluntarily and at his own urgent request engaged in repeated combat missions, including unusually hazardous sorties over Balikpapan, Borneo, and the Leyte area of the Philippines.

"His aggressiveness and daring resulted in his shooting down enemy airplanes totaling eight during this period."

Bong also earned the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, seven Distinguished Flying Crosses and 15 Air Medals.

--GreGen

Searching for Bong's Plane-- Part 2: A Good Chance the Wreckage Will Be Found

Another pilot, Thomas Malone, was flying the plane in March 1944 over what is now known as Papua New Guinea when engine failure sent it into a spin.  Malone bailed out before the plane crashed into the jungle.

Pacific Wrecks founder Justin Taylan will lead the search for the plane and plans to leave for Papua New Guinea in May.  He believes the search could take almost a month and cost $63,000 generated through generations.

Furthermore, he is confident that he will be successful since historical records provide an approximate location of the crash site.  But, he is not sure that there is enough left to positively identify the plane as the Marge.

Bong shot down more planes than any other American pilot, earning him celebrity status.  General Douglas MacArthur awarded him the Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. military decoration in 1944.

--GreGen

That Land and Those Waters Are Still Dangerous-- Part 2

Continued from April 13.

In the water surrounding the islands, hundreds of corroding shipwrecks from the war still contain trapped oil supplies that some describe as a ticking time bomb.  A major oil spill from one of these rusting wrecks could be a massive disaster.

Indeed, Savo Sound by Guadalcanal was renamed Iron Bottom Sound because of all of the ships sunk in it.

The Solomon Islanders believe those who fought the war on their land should be doing more to clean up the mess they left behind.

In the words of one local:  "When the war ended US, Japanese and allied forces went home in peace. We still do not have peace, until we are safe in the Solomon Islands."

--GreGen

Searching for Bong's Plane

From the March 26, 2024, CBS News "WW II ace pilot Richard Bong's plane crashed in 1944.  A team has launched a search for its wreckage in the South Pacific."

The Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin, (far northern part of the state) and the nonprofit World War II historical group Pacific Wrecks announced a search for the plane's remains on Friday according to Minnesota Public Radio.  

Bong grew up in Poplar, Wisconsin and is credited with shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft during World War II-- the most ever, according to the Air Force.

He flew a Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter plane nicknamed "Marge" in honor of his girlfriend, Marjorie Vattendahl.  He plastered a blowup picture of her on the nose of his plane (known as nose art).  At the time, Bong said that Vattendahl "looks swell, and a hell of a lot better than these naked women painted on most airplanes."

Bong was not in the plane when it crashed.

--GreGen

That Land and Those Waters Are Still Pretty Dangerous

From the April 11, 2024, ABC News "Video: How World War II is still wreaking havoc in the Pacific" by Stephanie March.

More than eight decades ago in the 1940s, WW II rages across the Pacific as ferocious battles between the Allies and Japanese took place.

One of the most significant ones was at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands where the Japanese advance across the ocean was finally stopped and where 30,000 lives were lost.

Now, over eight decades later, the deadly legacy of the battle continues.

On land, the islands are littered with unexploded devices-- almost 50,000 have been discovered since 2011.

Accidental detonations of the bombs and other munitions have caused deaths and injuries and survivors are left to struggle for themselves with very little support.

--GreGen

Lou Conter, Last Surviving Crew Member of USS Arizona Dies at Age 102

From April 1, 2024, KRA 3 NBC, Sacramento, Ca., News.

Lou Conter, the last living surviving member on board the USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, has died.  He was 102.

He had been in hospice the last four weeks and was surrounded by family in Grass Valley, California.

To me it is another in the passing of the Greatest Generation.  Not too long ago, we lost the last surviving member of Doolittle's Raid.

I knew this was coming, but it sure doesn't make it any easier.

--GreGen

USS California Unknown David Walker Has Been Identified

From March 28, 2024, WVEC News "Over 80 years after he was killed in Pearl Harbor, a Portsmouth sailor will be laid to rest at Arlington" by Christopher Colette.

A Virginia sailor who died at Pearl Harbor aboard the USS California, has been identified and is returning home to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The remains of 19-year-old Navy Mess Attendant 3rd Class David Walker were accounted for on November 27, 2023.

Walker was one of 103 crew members on the California who died that day.

He attended I.C. Norcom High School and whose family lived in Portsmouth, Virgina.

His body was recovered but no identification could be made at the time.  He was eventually buried as an unknown at the National memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

The burial will be at the cemetery on September 5, 2024.

--GreGen

Pearl Harbor Survivor Richard Higgins Dies at 102-- Part 2: There Are Now 22 (PHSA) Survivors of Pearl Harbor

Richard Higgins died March 21, 2024.

He was born on a farm near Magnum, Oklahoma, on July 24, 1921 and joined the Navy in 1939, retiring 20 years later.  He then became an aeronautics engineer for Northrup Grumman, and other defense contractors.  

He worked on the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

His wife, Winnie Ruth, died in 2004 after 60 years of marriage.  Shortly after checking into hospice care Thursday, he told his granddaughter, "I'm ready to go see Winnie Ruth."

There are now just 22 survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack according to Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors.  She said that other survivors may still be alive because not all joined the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association (PHSA) when it was formed in 1958.

About 87,000 military personnel were on Oahu on December 7.

--GreGen

100-Year-Old D-Day Veteran Getting Married Near Beaches of D-Day-- Part 3

Harold Terens later got dysentery which almost killed him.  He later had another close call when a British barkeeper refused to serve him past closing time despite his pleadings for just one more drink.  Moments after he was kicked out, a German rocket destroyed the pub.

Following the German surrender, Terens again helped transfer freed Allied prisoners back to England before he shipped back to the U.S. a month later.

He married his wife Thelma in 1948.  She died in 2018 after 70 years of marriage.  His bride-to-be, Jeanne Swerlin married at 21 and then had a second husband who died after 18 years and a long term boyfriend who died in 2019.

The couple and their families will travel to Paris in late May where Terens and a handful of Americans will be honored.  It will be his 4th D-Day commemoration.

So Happy for Them.  --GreGen

100-Year-Old D-Day Vet Getting Married-- Part 2: D-Day and a Secret Mission

It is so nice writing about this instead of the sad deaths of our Greatest Generation.

On D-Day, Harold Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.  He said half his company's pilots died that day.  He went to France twelve days later and helped transfer captured Germans and newly released Allied POWs back to England.

To him, the Germans seemed happy that their war was over and they might survive it, but he was angered at how badly the Allied prisoners had been treated by the Germans.

Later he went on a secret mission.  His planes hopscotched North Africa and eventually ended up in Tehran where he survived a robbery which left him naked in the desert until he was found by an American military police patrol.

He later learned the reason for the secret mission and that was that American bombers would fly from Britain to attack Axis targets in Eastern Europe.  They wouldn't have enough fuel to return, but instead would fly to the Soviet Union.  Terens job in the USSR was to feed the crews of those planes and get them ready to fly back to Britain.

--GreGen

One of the Last Pearl Harbor Survivors, Richard Higgins Dies at 102-- Part 1

From March 21, 2024, CBS News.

Richard C. "Dick" Higgins, 102, died in Bend, Oregon, on Tuesday, March 19, of natural causes.

He was a radioman assigned to a patrol squadron of seaplanes based in Hawaii when the attack came.  Higgins recounted that day in an oral history taken in 2008.  He had been in his bunk in the screened in  lanai on the third floor of his barracks when the bombing began.

I jumped out of my bunk and I ran over to the edge of the lanai and just as I got there, a plane went right over the barracks.  He figured the plane was about 50 feet over and 100 feet above his barracks.  He then described "the big red meatballs" on the plane (which were the Japanese symbol).

"So, there was no doubt what was happening in my mind, because of the things that had been going on."

--GreGen

Sure Going to Miss That 'World War II' Magazine

I was really saddened this past week to find out several of my favorite magazines are no longer going to be published.  And one of the best of the lot was the "World War II" magazine.  I was even considering taking out a subscription to it.  Kind of glad I didn't now.

I got quite a bit of material for this blog from it.

Right now I am going through the April 2022 issue which has these articles:

* Mel Brooks Goes to War.

* A U.S. Sub Commander's Ultimate Sacrifice.

* How a British Intelligence Blunder Killed Dozens of Allied Agents in Holland.

Always interesting articles and little-known facts about the war.

Hope It Comes Back.  --GreGen

100-Year-Old D-Day Vet Getting Married Near the Beaches of D-Day-- Part 1

From the March 11, 2024, Fox News "D-Day veteran, 100, to be married at World War II liberation site in France"  AP.

Harold Terens, 100, will be marrying his fiancee in France near where he first stepped ashore in that country as a 20-year-old Army corporal in 1944, a few days after the initial landings.

He will be honored in France in June on the 80th anniversary of that country's liberation.  Then, he plans on marrying his spry 96-year-old girlfriend, Jeanne Swerlin, near those same beaches.  They were both married to others before and started dating each other in 2021.

During the war she was in high school and dated soldiers who gave her war souvenirs like dog tags, knives and even a gun, trying to impress her.

Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year as a member of a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repairman.  He said that all four of the original pilots died during the war.

--GreGen

USS Oklahoma Unknown from Alabama Identified

From March 11, 2024, WAFF 48 (Alabama)  "Remains of WW II veteran from Rogersville identified."

Navy Seaman 2nd Class Cecil Thornton was accounted for in April 2019 but his family only received the news.  He was aboard the USS Oklahoma on the day of the attack which left 429 crewmen dead.  He was one of them.

He was from Rogersville, Alabama, and that is where he will be buried.

--GreGen

And Another USS Oklahoma Sailor to be Buried: Raymond Boynton

From March 7, 2024, Detroit Free Press  "Michigan native killed aboard USS Oklahoma to get military burial in Hawaii this month" by Jennifer Dixon.

Raymond Devere Boynton will be buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, on March 20.

He grew up in Grandville, near Grand Rapids and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in June 1940, shortly after his 18th birthday.  He was promoted from apprentice seaman to seaman second class in October 1940 and died just over a year later at the age of 19.

His last surviving relative, nephew Harry Zies of Springtown, Texas, says the burial would have given Raymond's sister a sense of closure as she always felt in the back of her mind that he was still alive.  However, that sister, Bette, Harry's mother, died in 2013.

So Glad the U.S. Is Doing This.  --GreGen

Another Identified USS Oklahoma Sailor to Be Buried: Charles E. Hudson

One of the more recent unidentified USS Oklahoma dead has been identified.  He is U.S. Navy Water Bidding 1st Class  Charles E,. Hudson who was 39 when he died.

He was originally from Stockton, California.

He will be buried at the National Memorial of the Pacific on Oahu, Hawaii, on September 10, 2021.

--GreGen

Wreckage of Marine Plane Found in South Pacific

From the March 2, 2024, New York Post  "Wreckage of WW II plane that vanished in South Pacific found after 80 years" by Angela Barbuti.

The wreckage of a Marine Douglas SBD Dauntless was found by Papua New Guinea locals in a jungle last month.  It went down January14, 1944, with pilot Lt. Billy Ray Ramsey and gunner Sgt. Charlie J. Sciara aboard.

The plane crashed into three pieces after having left Munda Airfield in New Georgia in the Solomon Islands to target Japanese shipping in the Rabaul Harbor as a part of a large number of planes.  The tail was shot off.

The bodies were not found and both were declared dead and MIA a year later.  Their remains have still not been found.  It is believed that Sciara survived the crash but died later in a Japanese prison camp.

--GreGen

Iowan to Receive Congressional Gold Medal Posthumously for Service in the 'Ghost Army'

From the February 28, 2024, Des Moines (Iowa) Register "This Iowan served in World War II's Ghost Army.  Years later, his service is being recognized" by Kyle Werner.

The sons of John T. Cantrell, of Des Moines, will receive a Gold Medal for him at a special service in Washington, D.C., at the Capitol on March 21.

Today, only seven members of he "Ghost Army" are still alive and all of them 100 years or older.

Information on this top secret group was classified for more that fifty years before finally being released1996.  Its 1,100 members will be receiving a Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest non-military medal.

This is coming about because of a lot of work by groups who thought they should receive the honor.

--GreGen