482nd ordnance evacuation

preacherman · Aug 25, 2014

My father was in 482nd Ordnance Evacuation Co. assigned to the Ninth Army during WW2. I"m trying to find out any information I can. Any help would be appreciated.

Earthican · Aug 26, 2014

You might try sending an email to the NARA at College Park MD to see if they have anything in the archive. Read this thread for a success story.

http://www.ww2f.com/topic/41008-after-action-reports/

Or you could hire a researcher:

http://www.archives.gov/research/hire-help/topics.html?topic=military

Very few service units have a web presence. Similar units can be useful for understanding what it was like.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.76699/transcript?ID=mv0001

...and then I was assigned to the 418th Ordnance Evacuation Company, European Theatre of War, for 14 months and seven days. Our major role was to take new tanks to the front line in the European war and to bring damaged tanks back for repair. Since accounting had been my profession, I was usually assigned the duty of keeping records, the company records, and also assigned to be driver for company commander....
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Good Luck

preacherman · Aug 26, 2014

Thanks a lot for the info, Earthican! Appreciate it!!

Earthican · Aug 27, 2014

Let us know how NARA responds. Since I don't have a relative to research (at the moment) I don't bother them.

If the records for the 482d Ordnance cannot be located, you might try for the records of the 334th Ordnance Battalion. A troop list for the Ninth Army, dated December 1944, shows the 482d Ordnance assigned to the 334th Ordnance headquarters.

I also found this newspaper article from 1944 for a soldier assigned to an evacuation company in Italy. It provides some sense of the role of these units. The tank transporter (tractor and trailer) seems to be their signature piece of equipment.

http://www.chippewavalleyww2.org/Veterans/K/Ko/KopplinHermanC/KopplinHermanC.htm

Eau Claire Soldier in Ordnance Work With Army in Italy
WITH THE FIFTH ARMY, Italy—Private First Class Herman C. Kopplin, son of Mrs. Molly Kopplin, 707 Gray Street, is serving in Italy with a section of the Fifth Army's 476th Ordnance Evacuation Company, which does everything from frontline wrecker service to right capsized locomotive engines.

The company, which has been overseas almost 15 months, spent considerable time in North Africa, cleaning up the Tunisian battlefields at the end of that campaign. Hundreds of tanks, half-tracks, and other armored vehicles, both friendly and enemy, he said, had to be hauled back to dumps for salvage.

After four grueling months on the Southern Italian Front, where difficult retrieving operations were performed in mud waist-deep, the outfit served on the Fifth Army's Anzio beachhead.

The company is split up into three major units, including a transporter unit, a T2 tank retriever unit, and a wrecker unit. The transporters use a massive vehicle for carrying 40-ton tanks and gun tubes, and the tank retriever, which is itself a General Sherman tank, equipped with a boom and a winch, is used for retrieving heavy, armored vehicles that have been shot up or bogged down in the spongy Italian soil.

Seven ten-ton wreckers are constantly alerted for hauling damaged tactical or combat vehicles from the field back to the salvage dumps. The company, which retrieved wrecked vehicles for the British for more than two months, performs most of its work after dark.

Many of the retrieving jobs carry the men up within "smelling distance" of the Jerries and, frequently, have drawn their fire.
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preacherman · Aug 27, 2014

That was a great article Earthican! I remember my Dad telling me that on one occasion that they sent him out to pickup a blownup German tank there were some of them still alive in the tanks. I'll have to try an research the 334th Ordnance Bat. like you said!
Thanks again for helping me out!

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