Great news! I entered the last enlisted sailor who was onboard on commissioning day (June 30th, 1943) and I am making my way through the rest of the Personnel file for the USS Boston (CA-69). The Personnel file has the Good (promotions), the Bad (disciplinary actions) and the Ugly (injuries via transfers to the hospital). Please look up your relative in the crew list and click on the name, this should begin to display the sailors war record as I enter data from the Personnel file.
Of note in July 2943, the chiefs of the sections, Chief Warrent Officer, Chief Machinist, etc. etc. who had “acting assignments” were upgraded to permanent assignments. Also in July a sailor died of a heart attack. The beginning of many discipline actions started the day after commissioning. There were at least three types of ‘courts’ that a sailor could be given a punishment for an infraction: Court Martial, Summary Court Martial, and Deck Court. Deck Court handled the lowest level infractions, disobeying an order, and some of the Absent without leave (AOL), Summary Court Martial handled more serious offences including longer AOL’s and intoxication while on duty. Court Martials were the most serious and could result in a sailor being transferred from the ship to a Naval Prison. During this period we had 1 court martial and about 40 summary court martial and deck court findings.
Wow! are the summary court martial and deck court finding strict!!!! a day late from leave could get a sailor 15 days in solitary confinement with just bread and water!
Other interesting happenings for this period in the personnel file is a person was transferred off ship on July 1st, 1943 giving him exactly 1 day of service on the Boston!
I thought about not including the discipline files in order to not offend anyone, but after long consideration I feel it’s part of the history of the people and the ship. Please view any entries in the disciplinary record as the navy’s attempt to keep order; Imagine if we were locked up in solitary confinement for a month every time we failed to show up at our job!
Early August was a promotion time! Many of the Sailor Second Class were upgraded to either Sailor First Class or Fireman third class. One Sailor was even promoted while we was AOL!
I’ll try to follow up in the next week with some thoughts on the roughly 1500 sailors who were on board for commissioning.
Partially through august 6th personnel files, I have 2,434 sailors who were on the Boston, 140 promotions, 39 summary court martials and deck court findings, and 40 notes in individual sailor files.
Happy reading the individual sailor records!
Bill