Three Brothers Killed on USS Oklahoma Identified-- Part 2: Malcom, Leroy and Randolph Barber

The article was longer than I thought and with more information.

All three of the brothers were on the USS Oklahoma that day on December 7, 1941, and were among the 429 who died on the ship.  It took some two years to get the capsized ship upright so that the bodies could be recovered, but by that time, there wasn't much left to identify them.

The three Barbers were the sons of Peter and Gertrude  Barber of New London, Wisconsin.

Malcolm and Leroy  joined the Navy in May 1940, with younger brother  Randolph joining in August.  Leroy was first to be assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma and he advised his brothers to request duty on that ship.

Because it was peacetime, the Navy made an exception to its rule against more than one brother serving on the same ship.

Gertrude Barber wrote "how grand they thought it was that they would all be on the same ship."  But, their father had other ideas and wrote the Navy two weeks before the attack requesting that his sons  be transferred to separate ships.

--GreGen