Archive for 2012

Scale Model of YMS-135 Subclass

A friend and model-maker, Rob Weilacher, is working on a YMS model. It appears to be about seven inches in length. Nice job!

YMS-135 Subclass Model

YMS-135 Subclass Model

You can see more of his work on his website, Loose Cannon Models.

Judge Charles F. Knapp Remembers His Infantry Service in Okinawa

Retired Judge Charles F. Knapp looks back on the amphibious assault on Okinawa, with illustrative moments like, “One day I was drinking coffee and a canteen cup was shot out of my hand by a Jap sniper. I saw where the shot came from and told my squad to keep the sniper busy while I went around in back of him. I got him with my machete.”

Read more on timesleaderonline.com.

Thank you for the stories and even more for your preserving of our freedoms.

Bomber Pilot, Ignatius “Naish” Loncao Remembers His Service in Okinawa

Here is another great vet story posted in honor of today’s holiday. B-24 bomber pilot, Ignatius “Naish” Loncao talks about being drafted, shipped overseas, and his service in the Japanese air space. You can find that article on the Livingston County News website.

Your service has not gone unnoticed. Thank you, sir.

US Marine, Ralph Irwin on the Battle of Okinawa

US Marine, Ralph Irwin gives his humble account of the Battle of Okinawa, saying “I am no hero. I was just one of the lucky ones.”

This is a great read over at thedailytimes.com.

I sincerely thank you for your service, Ralph.

Coming Soon: Audio Stories

I spent the Veteran’s Day weekend honoring my grandfather’s service by processing a pile of audio recordings I took with him. They are now isolated into specific stories about his service, encoded into .mp3 for posting, and are ready for transcribing. Look for them soon. Stories include talking about going ashore, the alcohol reserves soldiers used for bartering amongst each other, and the monkey and cat aboard the ship that chased each other around.

Also, if you haven’t taken a look yet, see the new menu item for the journal (above). I’ve been rapidly putting up a month at a time of the raw journal text. I’ll circle back and annotate when it is all there, as I have a good amount of supplementary content, definitions, and backstories.

USS Rhea Photos from Jim Sherret

I received the below photos and story from boatswain, Jim Sherret, of the Canadian Navy cadets from the late 60’s to the early 70’s. I quite like the Christmas lights photo.

USS Rhea; Port Stanley

USS Rhea; Port Stanley

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YMS on YouTube

I took a look on YouTube to see what kinds of YMS videos there are. Surprisingly, there were more than zero…which is about what I expected to find. Here’s what I found:

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Backdating Letters and Journal Entries

Now that WordPress has fixed the date issue, I’m going to backdate any relevant posts to the date they were originally written. It’ll prevent them from showing up in RSS feeds (I think), but it’ll make them easier to read in order by time.

This’ll also contribute to the ultimate goal of generating a dynamic timeline. Pardon the dust.

Up next, I’m going to just back into transcribing some action reports and muster rolls. I want to get the names up as soon a I can, to start auditing names and families.

 

YMS-135 Subclass BuShips Blueprints

I got this collection of images from Rob Weilacher, a friend of some relatives who is a model builder. He also sent me a copy of some blueprints he purchased, but I haven’t posted them for copyright concern.

YMS-135 Blueprint; Pilot Bridge Deck

YMS-135 Blueprint; Pilot Bridge Deck

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More Letters on the Way

As you can see, I posted a couple new letters. I’m making a concerted effort to post regularly again, now that the holidays are over. I certainly have millions of documents that need to be combed.

We’re still pre-action here in terms of Chuck in the war. The next letter will be his first time aboard YMS-299, which is exciting. You’ll get his first impressions of the ship and we’ll be going into the shakedown, where the ship is stress tested prior to crossing the Pacific and going into firefights.

New Facebook Page

I created a Facebook page to post batches of media faster, before I’ve had a chance to transcribe and/or research them fully. It’ll also make it easier to follow updates without having the blog posts mixed into your feed readers.

https://www.facebook.com/yms299

Timeline Work to Continue

I am on a roll here with the brief status updates, so I’ll also let the cat out that WordPress (the blog platform I am using) has finally fixed the bug about old dates. If you curiously looked at my blog post from 1945, you’ll see I was having trouble backdating posts that far. I wanted to post each journal entry, for example, from the date it originated.

The ultimate plan is to enter all of the journal entries and letters (I’ll go back and fix them) in the actual date they are from. This will allow me to put them all into a timeline that I can also add war context to (e.g., XYZ invasion, presidential speeches, etc.). It will make it easier and more interesting to browse.

It’s a big project, for sure, but it will be a life’s work.

Our Muster Roll and More!

In other news, I was also contacted by Jim Harlan, son of John Harlan, who served alongside my grandfather on the ship. He happened upon the YMS-299 muster roll I’d been searching for. I got my hands on dozens of pages from several roll calls. I am in the middle of transcribing them all and will begin posting pieces of them very soon so people may Google their family members’ names and find this site.

I am holding out a glimmer of hope that one or more of the soldiers on my ship are living. I know it isn’t very likely, but I have found another YMS sibling’s crew member who is living. It isn’t my ship, but I’d like to visit soon to ask questions about the ship that I was never able to ask my grandfather.

USS Rhea Wheel & Helm For Sale

I was recently contacted by Jim Howlett, another cadet out of Port Stanley. He informed me he ran across Rhea’s wheel for sale on a nautical antiques site:

Scruton Marine Services

Cool stuff! Of course, it is well overpriced, and I wouldn’t know what to do with such a large thing in my house, but it is a very neat find, nonetheless. I am curious how they validated the authenticity of it—and if it is truly WWII-era, or if it would have been replaced post-war. They have the YMS number wrong in their listing, which makes me wonder.