USS Boston CA-69 in WWII

7-30-11

My father didn’t have a Cruise Book.  Since other children of plank owners have written us and mentioned their dad’s Cruise Books, my brother Bill and I have wondered why we never saw the Cruise Book growing up.  Since my father, a child of the depression and a very large family was “thrifty”, we now realize that he just was not willing (or able) to actually pay for a copy.

Fortunately for me and this website, I met Pat Fedele a year and a half ago.  Pat, a terrific tenor, convinced two shipmates to form a singing trio. They called themselves the “3 B’s” and entertained the crew during Happy Hours and other occasions.  They were so good that they actually went aboard other ships and performed at their Happy Hours.

Pat is a generous man.  Among his collection of memorabilia is a well-worn copy of the Boston Cruise Book.  On my second visit to Pat’s home, he allowed me to take his Cruise Book so I could scan it.  I sent it back to him when I finished.  I now have a large collection of scans  -  the pages from Pat’s book.  We used many of them to flesh out the “Division photos” on this website.

Despite my recent post in which I said I would talk about lagoons and anchorages, I have decided to spend some time posting pictures from the Cruise Book  -   little slices of life aboard the Boston.

All Cruise Book pics are compliments of Pat Fedele

Theodore A. Pilger

With my laser focus on just adding sailors on and off the boston, I have reached September 1945 when the war ended. Given the gaps on the records and the readable records this will take a while to completely clean up, but I have 2,363 records to date in the database with some form of sailor ID, First Name, Last Name and many with enlistment place and date records. Currently, I need to add 1,466 records of sailors departures after the war was over, we’ve already have 5,713 records of arrivals and departures. I also have about 22 records where a sailor left the ship without arriving, arrived or departed twice in succession (which is obviously an error!), I have about 7 orphan records where I have Sailor information and no add or received records (this happens when I find an error in the navy ID and fix it in the sailor record and forget to fix the on/off records). Given my original records from Frank Studenski’s diary I expect to add an additional 127 sailors who I believe have been missed due to unreadable records.

One interesting data point which I’d like to analyze further is the number of sailors who went to the hospital after the ship arrived in San Pedro in May of 1945 looks very high. My plan is to do a separate Hospital analysis.

We’ve recorded a few deaths, during the records, but I’d like to correlate these with the Deck Log to find out exactly what happened. The few I know about were from natural causes and one was electrocution.

As I said before, Since april-may of 1945 I’ve lost enlistment data for new sailors added in 1945, the data simply wasn’t recorded because it looks like the navy was preparating for computerized records and decided they no longer had to record where each sailor enlist and the enlistment date for every record. I’ll have to fix the display for these sailor records, because it says they enlisted at “,” which looks dumb. I’ve processed 985 pages of records for sailors coming on off the boston, I have 187 pages left to process.

I’ve made a decision that since this blog is about the BOSTON in World War II AND I’m not going to add sailors who joined the boston after the war was actually over. If you disagree with me let me know and we can discuss it, just hit the contact button and let me know.

thanks,
Bill

7-4-11

What was it like to be aboard a warship in Task Force 58 during the Pacific War?  Here’s a glimpse of one day . . .

From the diary pages of Augustus Harris, SC1, CA-69 (compliments of his family.)

Another peek, with more detail . . .

From the diary pages of Pat Fedele (compliments of Pat)

And, from the incomparable War Diary of Frank Studenski (whose entries became the basis for the book A Bird’s Eye View)

July 4, 1944

This morning at 0500 hrs our planes were launched to bomb the bases and airstrips of Iwo Jima.  At 1530 hrs the Boston, Canberra, San Juan, Santa Fe, Mobile and about 15 destroyers went in to bombard the island.  We fired our 8” and 5” guns. We got in close to the island to fire 5” shells.  We launched one of our catapult planes for spotting duty over the targets.  We were hitting the southern airfield where almost 70 aircraft were lined up.  We also hit gas storage tanks.  We were hitting all of our assigned targets.  Looking through the binoculars, I could see a lot of planes on the field blowing up.  There was a lot of large fires and explosions.  The smoke was thousands of feet in the air.  A ship was sighted leaving the harbor, so we immediately opened fire on her. A destroyer went in to finish her off.  One of the planes from the Santa Fe that was spotting for us was shot down by Jap fighters.  The crew was picked up by one of the submarines.  All together this day 116 Jap planes were destroyed and five ships were sunk or severely damaged.  This was a great way to celebrate the Fourth of July, killing Japs.

That’s how the crew of the USS Boston spent the Fourth of July, 1944.

P.S. I would be remiss if I did not point out the remarkable behind-the-scenes work my brother Bill has been doing on creating the crew records data-base.  Please read the following post!   If you want to sample his database work, which includes pictures of the sailors (when people supply them), check out my father’s entry: Kelly, William L.

Happy 4th of July
Steve