Here’s the obituary and gravesite of a soldier killed in action while serving alongside YMS-299, on a sibling ship. View the original on Find a Grave.
Granville Lee Rumble, served aboard YMS-427, killed in action
Name: Granville Lee Rumble
Age: 19
Served: US Navy, Fireman 2/C
Location: Pacific Theater of Operations
Story: Injured while doing mine sweeps. Buried at sea in 1945, alongside two other crew members.
Here’s a cool find! The William F. Stone & Sons Company in Oakland, California built the YMS-299. Someone from the Stone family has written up a story about the shipyard with a pile of photos, including one of the YMS-299 in 1942, before she went off into battle.
YMS-299 in Oakland, CA; 1942
From the presentation:
Wooden Boat Building in San Francisco Bay: One Family’s Story
A memoir of the Stone family: William Isaac Stone, William Frank Stone, Lester Frank Stone
Presentation to the Alameda County Historical Society at the Encinal Yacht Club,
Alameda, California, January 26, 2012by Roberta O’Grady, granddaughter of W.F. Stone and Niece of Lester F. Stone
Sep 29
Just as an update, it may appear I haven’t posted in a while, but that isn’t the case. Most of the content in this website is back-dated to the time it happened in history. For example, browse back to 1945 and see some of the letters and journal entries I’ve been transcribing and filing.
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
You can see more of his work on his website, Loose Cannon Models.
Nov 12
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.
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
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.
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
Jan 29
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.
Jan 28
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.