JULIUS ELLSBERRY ( 1921-1941)
Ellsberry, who was from Birmingham, Alabama, volunteered for the Navy when he turned 18. During the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, he helped to rescue shipmates before he was killed when the Japanese bombed his ship, the battleship USS Oklahoma.
Just days before, he had written his mother to tell her that he wouldn't be home for Christmas and mailed a money order to buy presents for the family.
--GreGen
The last post didn't have much on her military service so I looked further.
From VA News "Veteran of the Day."
Dovey was born in 1914 in North Carolina and graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1938 and briefly taught school in South Carolina before enlisting in the U.S. Army. She was recruited by Dr. Mary Bethune, among with 39 other black women for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later became just the Women's Army Corps (WAC).
Dovey achieved the rank of captain and was responsible for the recruitment of other black women into the unit.
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From Wikipedia "Women's Army Corps."
Black women served in the WAAC and WAC. Black women serving in the WAC experienced segregation in much the same fashion as they had in civilian life. Some billets accepted WACs of any race, but others didn't.. Black womnen were taught the same specialties as white women and the races were not separated in at specialty training schools.
The U.S. Army goal was to have 10% of all WACs be Blacks, to reflect the U.S. population, but a shortage of recruits brought only 5.1% black women to the WAC.
The first black woman to become a commissioned officer was Charity Adams Earley.
--GreGen
Roundtree was a Women's Army Corps member who used the GI Bill to attend law school at Howard University School of Law. Then she started a law firm in Washington, D.C. and won a landmark Civil Rights case, Sarah Keys vs. Carolina Coach Company in 1955, and helped to secure a ban against racial segregation in interstate bus travel.
"Evers and Roundtree are part of a generation of black veterans who use their service as a way to launch their involvement with the Civil Rights Movement," says Delmont. "They're making sure that the United States is a place where freedom and democracy will be true for all people, and they came back and fight for that."
--GreGen
Evers was just 19 when he joined up with the Red Ball Express, a group of blacktruck drivers who transported supplies all across Europe after D-Day. They were really essential to the war effort.
Evers World War II military service helped spark a political awakening.
When he returned to the U.S., he led black veterans to register to vote in Decatur, Mississippi, on 1946. White townspeople with guns turned them away.
His experience really dramatically highlights that double victory campaign, according to Delmont. This was the way that black Americans are both fighting to win the war militarily, fighting agaisnt fascism, but alsotrying to fight against racism at home."
He was assassinated by a white supremacist in 1963.
--GreGen
Chariry Adams (1918-2000)
Adams, a member of the Women's Army Corps, served as the leader of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. This was an all-Black unit. These women delivered mail from the home front to troops in the European Theater, processing an average of 65,000 pieces of mail per shift. Before these women got involved with the mail, it was hopelessly backlogged.
By making sure all the mail got through, she and her command helped keep the morale of American troops up.
The 6888th was also the largest group of black women to serve overseas during the war. Adams saw her duty as showing white Americans what black women could do.
"What we had was a large group of adult Negro women who had been victimized, in one way or the other, by racial bias," Adams said later. "This was one opportunity for us to stand together for a common cause."
--GreGen
Both the American aviation industry and the postwar Air Force had an interest in seeing the planes scrapped as soon as possible.
The Air Force especially had an interest as they had seen the hobbling effect of WW I surplus planes had on the growth of the Army Air Service. The next war would not be fought with B-17s or even B-24s. New airplanes were on the horizon and existing planes would be a roadblock to their acquisition.
Plus, aluminum ingots recovered from scrapped aircraft constituted an alloy not necessarily appropriate to returning to aviation construction. For example, a B-24 Liberator contained 13,000 pounds of aluminum. Scrapping and melting was estimated to recover 65% to 70% of the tonnage.
Navy aircraft scrapping in the fall of 1945 involved the manual separation of differing metals. At Naval Air Station Jacksonville in Florida, about five warplanes were salvaged daily. The costly metal separation task was done largely by prisoners of war in 1945. With their expected return to their countries expected to happen in 1946, the profitability of of te Jacksonville salvage operation was in question.
--GreGen
From the October 16, 2022, General Aviation News "The fate of World War II surplus aircraft" by Frederick Johnsen.
The war ends and there are a lot of aircraft that now have no job. So, what do you do with them?
Aircraft storage areas, typically in Arizona and the southwest became the new homes for the older and sometines war-weary aircraft. By early August 1945, with the war still underway, about 4,000 aircraft were already in these holding areas.
You could find the aircraft at airfields such as Wickenburg, Arizona, Ontario and Blythe, California.
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was in charge of disposal. Efforts to recoup costs involved selling their engines and accessories, while scrapping the aluminum frames.
In August 1945, Ontario, hosted 1,600 surplus warplanes, Blythe 877, Hemet, California, logged 27 and Phoenix had 236 and Wickenburg 680.
The Los Angeles RFC office estimated that it cost $8 per month per aircraft for storage and processing., including handling sales.
--GreGen
From the October 14, 2022, 12 WIBW, Topeka, Kansas, "WW II veteran to be laid to rest in Junction City" by Alex Taylor.
The remains of Seaman 2nd Class Pete Turk will return home to Kansas and laid to rest at the Kansas Veterans' Cemetery on Monday October 17 at 10:30 am with full military honors.
Pete Turk was in the U.S. Navy and was killed in action on Sunday, December 7, 1941, while stationed on the battleship USS California. He was twenty years old.
In 2018, the DPAA exhumed the twenty-five USS California unknowns from the Punchbowl for analysis.
Turk is the first USS California sailor to be indentified.
--GreGen
I have been writing about the sinking of the destroyer USS Jacob Jones(DD-61) by a U-boat during World War I in my Cooter's History blog. It was under the command of David W. Bagley at the time. There was also a second destoyer USS Jacob Jones (DD-130) that was sunk by a torpedo during WW II as well as a destroyer escort USS Jacob Jones (DE-130) that was in the war, but did not get sunk.
David Bagley continued in the U.S. Navy and rose to the rank of admiral and at the beginning of 1941 he was commander of Battleship Division 2, with his flag on the USS Tennessee (BB-43) and was at Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, when the attack damaged his ship.
On April 14, 1942, he assumed command of the 14th Naval District (Hawaii) and the Hawaiian Sea Frontier and served there until January 1943, then he commanded the Western Sea Frontier from February 1, 1943, and also commandant of the 11th Naval District and eventually the 14th District again until the end of the war.
You can read about his earlier service in my Cooter's History Thing blog. Just click on the site in My Blogs List to the right of this.
Looks like I'll have to do some RoadTripping Through History.
--GreGen
John Basilone, a New Jersey resident returned home after Guadalcanal to a richly deserved hero's welcome and a parade. But he asked to rejoin his comrades and died on the opening day of the attack on Iwo Jima in February 1945.
Breaking a bottle on the ship's bow was Ryan Manion, a woman who lost her brother in an ambush in Fallujah, Iraq. Her brother, Travis Manion, was killed by a sniper when he exposed himself to enemy fire to divert attention from his unit in 2007.
Manion, who is one of the ship's sponsors, is president of the Pennsylvania-based Travis Manion Foundation, which aims to empower veterans and families of fallen heroes.
A Ship Honoring Two Heroes. --GreGen
From the June 19, 2022, Chicago Tribune "Destroyer christened."
The christening of a Navy destroyer on Saturday at Navy Shipbuilder Bath Iron Works in Maine highlighted the sacrifices of two generations: the ship's namesake killed in World War II and another Marine who died more than 60 years later.
The future USS Basilone, a 509 foot guided missile destroyer bears the name of Marine Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone.
Basilone was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism while defending Henderson Field against a fierce assault by a 3,000-strong Japanese force during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942.
--GreGen
From the November 11, 2021, Yahoo News "Honoring Fannie McClendon: 101-year-old Tempe veteran could receive national honor."
At 101 years old, Fannie McClendon still tells stories about her time in the U.S. Army and Air Force. The Tempe, Arizona, resident occupies a unique place in history.
During World War II, she joined the only Army battalion comprised entirely of black women. Her service and the efforts of more than 800 of her fellow soldiers, could earn a Congressional Gold Medal.
It did and, well-deserved.
--GreGen
"All told, I was in the service for 26 1/2 years and never thought about getting any special honors. I am amazed that I'll be receiving the Congressional Gold Medal for our service during the war.
"Every member of the 6888th will receive one. I'm only sorry that out of more than 800 battalion members, only a handful of us are still living to see this day.
"I'm grateful to have lived an amazing life, but what matters most is what all those letters represented: staying connected to the ones we hold dear."
She certainly has lived an amazing life and especially with the things she accomplished while being a woman and especially being a black woman. Talk about obstacles overcome.
A Proud Member of the GreGen, the Greatest Generation. --GreGen
"Our battalion was determined to bring cheer and hope to our soldiers. So when we first arrived in Birmingham, England, we worked in round-the-clock shifts, seven days a week, and in only three months we cleared up a backlog of around 17 million pieces of mail. That was two times faster than the Army thought we could get it done.
"During the war, we also served in France. After the war, I joined the Air Force. I was in line to become a squadron commander, but every time I got assigned, they would send me for more training. But, that's all right. At training camp in Cheyenne, Wyoming, is where I met my late husband, Roy.
"And, eventually, I did get that promotion. I became the first woman to lead an all-male squadron in the Strategic Air Command."
Not to mention that she was a black woman and to rise to that rank and command back then was nothing short of amazing.
Quite a Woman. --GreGen
From the August/September, 2022, AARP Magazine "Woman of Letters" as told to Robin Westen.
Vet Fannie McClendon's World War II unit receives long overdue recognition.
When she was in high school, her favorite subjects were history and geography, so she figured a good way to see the world and get close to history was to enlist in the Army. The military was still segregated back then (she is a black woman) and she was assigned to the first all-black, all-female United States Army unit to be deployed overseas.
She served in Europe during the war with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. (I have written about them before, just click on the label below.)
"We had an important job to do. Our soldiers in Europe weren't getting their letters and packages delivered -- there was a backlog of two to three years. And the mail is the thread that keeps our service members connected to their families back home."
--GreGen
