Ive been trying to research my dads servic history. I have his discharge paper and it shows that he enlisted in July of 43, but he wasn’t assigned to a ship ( USS O Brien) untill July of 45, the rest of the time it appears that he was bounced around a bunch of different training bases here in country, is 2 years of training normal during war time ? The paper is a bit degraded, can anyone out there decipher all these acronyms ?
Was he an officer? Others can chime in but so far it looks like Armed Forces Induction Station, Harrisburg, Pa., a WW2 version of MEPS Military Entrance Processing Station Naval training station Great lakes IL, Officer candidate school newport RI, Naval Torpedo Testing Range, Montauk, L.I., N.Y. San fran CA, USS obrien US nav
Filling in a couple of blanks just from knowing how these things went . . . such as the start of line 3; he would have reported to a receiving station in advance of his being transferred across county where he would have reported to still another receiving station. Closest receiving station on Montauk Torpedo Test Range was the receiving station in New York City. Anyway, my take on his various stations: Armed Forces Induction Station, Harrisburg, PA Naval Training Station, Great Lakes IL Naval Training School (Torpedo), Newport RI Naval Torpedo Testing Range, Montauk, Long Island, NY Naval Receiving Station, New York, NY Naval Receiving Station, Shoemaker, CA Naval Ammunition Depot, Hawthorne, NV Naval Receiving Station, San Francisco, CA USS O’Brien Receiving Station Navy 3142 (3142 is the base number for Manila, Philippine Islands) Naval Receiving Station, Staging and Separation Center, Subic Bay, Luzon, PI And, no, two years before actually arriving on a ship would not be terribly unusual. I see he completed the torpedo training school, an assignment to the torpedo test range, and a stint at an ammunition depot, all of which, no doubt, chewed up time, especially at the depot. Frankly, I am a little surprised he was not at least a TM3c with that background and 2 years 8 months and 21 days service, looks like he did not quite get there, the "TM" after his final rate, S1c, means he was, as they say, striking, or working towards, torpedomans mate. Anyway, enlists on 22 Jul 1943, actually enters service 29 Jul 1943, reaches USS O'Brien 30 Apr 1945, and separates 12 Apr 1946. Though one should bear in mind that the O'Brien's muster roll says he was received aboard from the receiving station at San Francisco for temporary duty, which means he just may, may, have been aboard simply for transportation to a shore station in the Philippines. And how do I know about the muster roll? I checked. Another piece to the puzzle places him received aboard APL-19 (a barracks barge) on 15 Mar 46 from that Navy 3142 (Manila) station and transfers him, for discharge, from APL-19 to the separation center at Subic Bay on 6 Apr 1946. Notice he has a local, off station address, at the time of his separation. I would hazard a guess that he had been on shore duty for some time. Place like the Philippines at the end of the war, what with exchange privileges, on base mess, and such, even a S1c's pay went a long way.
The one after Hawthorne looks to be 'RS San Pedro, CA'. San Pedro was the harbor for U.S. Fleet before it deployed to Pearl. We need to encourage people to submit a negative of their papers along with the regular images, to give us another shot at scanning.
I thought about San Pedro, but the receiving station for that area was usually identified as NRS San Diego. Settled on someone trying to abbreviate San Francisco to "San Fran" because there was nothing between that entry and USS O'Brien where the ship's muster roll shows him along with a bunch of others, looks like a draft to me, as being received from NRS San Francisco.
Thanks for all the info guys ! Heck I thought 6 weeks of boot camp an you were off to war, looks as if he missed the whole thing. The A bomb was probably dropped when he was halfway across the ocean. I applied to the archives for his service record but I’m still waiting on that, the Navy did send me Dads medals, that was really good, I need to find out what his uniform patches and insignia were, I’ll pick them up at a gun show and build a nice display.
How did you find my father on a muster roll ? I googled the OBrien and got a site with a muster roll but he wasnt on it. Seems like an awful lot of training to not get posted to a ship ?
Fold3 is a website. Fold3 - Historical military records. It's a tremendous resource. There is a free area and a pay area. I don't know if the information is available at VETRECS.
Dad never told me anything personally about the war except that he was in the Phillipines and that he boxed in the navy. Is there any way to look that up?