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USAAF Santa Rosa 1945

Discussion in 'Military Service Records & Genealogical Research' started by Marnie, Dec 11, 2017.

  1. Marnie

    Marnie New Member

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    ISO name of WWII Lieutenant that left USAAF Santa Rosa & plane was shot down on first mission in mid 1945. My grandmother worked at a restaurant near the base. She & her friends would sneak on the base late at night. How do I find the full name of this Lieutenant? He is the father of my Aunt. My Grandmother told her his first & middle name was Richard Franklin. All we know for sure is that he was tall & blonde.
     
  2. JJWilson

    JJWilson Well-Known Member

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    Welcome to the Forums Marnie! We will surely find some info for you, hopefully soon.
     
  3. Marnie

    Marnie New Member

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    I would greatly appreciate any help I could get!!!
     
  4. Jaap Vermeer MDE

    Jaap Vermeer MDE Active Member

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  5. LRusso216

    LRusso216 Graybeard Staff Member

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    I assume your aunt is married.. Do you know her maiden name? That would help us identify her father.
     
  6. Marnie

    Marnie New Member

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    Her father died before she was born. So my Grandmother did not give her his last name. They weren't married either. Throughout her life she was never told her father's last name. He could have been a married man with a family.

    Is there a way to find all the men with the first named Richard at USAAF Santa Rosa in 1945? We were told he was a Lieutenant & his plane was shot down on his first mission. We do not know if he was a pilot or one of many on a transport plane. Wouldn't that make him Airborne? My aunt keeps saying Army, but Santa Rosa was an Army Air Force Base.
     
  7. JJWilson

    JJWilson Well-Known Member

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    I would assume Marnie, that you're aunt meant USAAF (Army air Force) especially because of Santa Rosa being as you said an Army Air Force base.
     
  8. TD-Tommy776

    TD-Tommy776 Man of Constant Sorrow

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    During WWII, the Air Force was part of the US Army, not a separate branch as it is today. So, in one sense, your aunt is not wrong. The term "Airborne" applies to specialized infantry units which are deployed (usually) via parachute.
     
  9. Marnie

    Marnie New Member

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    I have come to the conclusion that my grandmother made up the first name Richard (not the first time she used it). Where can I search killed in action by name? I want to see if there is a Lieutenant with the last name Franklin. Possibly killed in the Pacific Theater.
     
  10. R Leonard

    R Leonard Member

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    There are 205 mentions of the word "Franklin" in the Missing Air Crew Reports from 1945. Lots of first and middle names, names of officers compiling reports, Franklin Streets, and so on.

    I have extracted the name from all those with Franklin as an individual’s surname.

    CBI Theater - Franklin, Guy E, PFC, (6948357), Crew, 10 Combat (Cargo?) Squadron, KIA 4/24/1945

    CBI Theater - Franklin, Joseph L, 1LT, (O889199), Navigator, 11th Bomber Squadron Medium 341st Bomber Group, KIA 6/20/1945

    ETO Theater - Franklin, George B, 1LT, (O-769114), passenger, 155 Photo Recon Squadron 67 Tactical Recon Group, KIA 3/14/1945

    ETO Theater - Franklin, Donald J, 2LT, (O-780564), Copilot, 730 Bomber Squadron (H) 452d Bomber Group (H), KIA 3/19/1945

    ETO Theater - Franklin, E, PFC, (4385777), Crew, 3d TC Squadron 115 TC Group, KIA 3/24/1945

    ETO Theater - Franklin, J B, PVT, (19021125), passenger, 49th TC Squadron 313th TC Group, KIA 3/24/1945

    MTO Theater - Franklin, Eugene K, 2LT, (O-1695567), R/O NF, 416 Night Fighter Squadron, KIA 1/29/1945

    MTO Theater - Franklin, William T, SSGT, (not readable), Waist Gnr, 772d Bomber Squadron 436 Bomber Group, KIA 4/1/1945

    PTO Theater - Franklin, Ben, TSGT, (6920464), Tail Gnr, 769 Bomber Squadron 462 Bomber Group, KIA 5/25/1945

    PTO Theater - Franklin, Loyd W, TSGT, (14026560), Radio Opr, 882 Bomber Squadron 500 Bomber Group, KIA 5/25/1945

    PTO Theater - Franklin, Joseph W, 1LT, (O-737402), Pilot, 52d Bomber Squadron 29th Bomber Group, MIA 6/5/1945
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2018
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  11. Marnie

    Marnie New Member

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    Now that is impressive!!! I knew joining this site was going to be fruitful. Is this search site available to me? If you do not wish to share publicly...my email is RedFoxNJ@yahoo.com. Thank you!!!!!!!!
     
  12. R Leonard

    R Leonard Member

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    This sort of information is available here Fold3 - Historical military records but it is not free. If you really don't want to spring for a subscription, you can still search around just to see if there are relevant documents, you just can't see them. So, make a note somewhere and check back in the week before Veterans Day. Sometimes they open the site up for free around that time. Re do your search parameters and see what come up. MACR access where I got the above requires a site subscription or one of their free access periods. On the other hand, the American Battle Monuments and Foreign Burial of American War dead sections of the WW2 portion are always free.
     
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  13. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    On the other hand if you have the spare cash and want to support the site feel free to get a sub. I personally don't have one but have seen a number of posts here from people that do where it has allowed them to fairly quickly find information others were looking for.
     
  14. R Leonard

    R Leonard Member

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    On the other hand, you could go here . . . which I discovered by searching by service number . . .

    http://www.usaafdata.com//?q=search&page=544&page__

    and the Franklin’s start about half way down the page, a total of 32 entries on pages 545 & 546. You can also enter Franklin under Last Name across the top, make sure you chose “contains” or you’ll miss the Jr’s, click Apply and you have all the Franklin’s in this data base on one page.

    And it is free :)

    Rich
     
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  15. Marnie

    Marnie New Member

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    Is there a way to list all the men stationed at Santa Rosa in 1945?
    If that is possible...could it also include if they died in 1945?
    Santa Rosa is my key to unlocking the family secret!!!
     
  16. Jaap Vermeer MDE

    Jaap Vermeer MDE Active Member

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  17. Jaap Vermeer MDE

    Jaap Vermeer MDE Active Member

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  18. R Leonard

    R Leonard Member

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    Is there a way to list all the men stationed at Santa Rosa in 1945?

    Specifically for Santa Rosa AAF? Not of which I am specifically aware. But then again, I specialize in USN documents.

    If that is possible...could it also include if they died in 1945?

    Even if you could get your hands on same, it would be a period document. You would really need to know exactly to what activity he was assigned. For example, if there for pilot training, then you would need to know the class to which he was assigned. Just a station roster would do you little good as it would be for personnel permanently assigned . . . classes are not permanent assignments, they are transient by nature.

    A lot of these training classes, pilots, navigators, bombardiers, etc., appear in station produced “year-books” but without knowing which one to look for, even if it were available, it would not tell you anything about what happened to individuals after completing whatever course and moving on to their next assignment.

    Santa Rosa is my key to unlocking the family secret!!!

    I don’t think Santa Rosa is necessarily the key. Granted, USAAF personnel is not really my field of study, but it seems to me what you really need as an extremely accurate read on the gent’s name and then search by name. If the family tradition has it that he was killed in 1945, then, probably, he was . . . but maybe he was not. I am of a suspicious nature, especially when going down the oral history/tradition road. My very first question would be “. . . and how did we find out he was killed?” If we are concluding he was killed because he never returned to Santa Rosa, then that may not reasonable conclusion.

    We already know how to get a list of USAAF personnel surnamed “Franklin” killed or missing in the entire war, all 30 some-odd of them, and when they were killed, and we can readily see which ones are officers and which are not. If you are really comfortable with “Franklin” as a surname, then the next step is investigating the officers listed as best you can, one by one, starting with the last one in 1945 and working backwards into 1944 (from your descriptions, anyone killed before 1944 would be too far outside the search parameter).

    Unfortunately, I am unsure as to what such a search might turn up. Perhaps not much more that we already know, perhaps a smidgeon more personal information, but not much more. But, you’d be surprised, sometimes if you are looking for a specific individual (something I do with some regularity in my USN research) you get hits on colleges, fraternities, hometown newspapers, all sorts of stuff . . . but a word of warning, not necessarily the person you are looking for, a similar name, for example, but not even born until 1975. But, and it is a big but, sometimes you can get a satisfying “Ah Ha, just what I was looking for” moment.

    Of course, it is all a matter of what you are looking for and why you are looking – which goes without saying is none of my business and I DO NOT want to know. If you are successful, though, you should be prepared that there may be information you really do not want to know, either.

    For what it is worth, there was also a Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Santa Rosa. Below is a list of Naval Aviators, surnamed named Franklin. There were, of course at least 78 other officers in the Navy surnamed Franklin during the war, but these are the only aviators (How do I know? USN aviators . . . that IS my field of study) and only one was killed in action during the war:

    Charles H Franklin (076075), LCDR USNR AV(N)
    George E Franklin (326417), ENS USNR AV(N)
    Grover C Franklin Jr (236100), LTJG USNR AV(T)
    Henry L Franklin (124684), LTJG USNR AV(N)
    Isaac D Franklin Jr (395316), ENS USNR AV(N)
    John H Franklin (320803), ENS USNR AV(N)
    John Rutherford Franklin (106606), LTJG USNR AV(N), KIA 10/26/1942 VF-72
    Richard C Franklin (263512), ENS USNR AV(N)
    Robert C Franklin (231403), LTJG USNR AV(T)
    Thomas M Franklin (391095), ENS USNR AV(N)

    I don’t have anything in my lists to indicate any of these men were ever at NAAS Santa Rosa, but I don’t have anything that would definitively exclude them either, except for John Rutherford Franklin, as his death pre-dates the station.

    The station was established on 29 Jun 1943. After some shuffling about, eventually Carrier Aircraft Support Unit (CASU) 36 became the permanent tenant to support the training activities of the units cycling through the station. Initially several squadrons returning from combat were there for reforming, and two or three others, which never deployed, were present for in-type operational training, but eventually things settled out into an air group pre-deployment operational training environment. Carrier air groups 6 and 5 trained there in 1944 and later went west back into combat. Air Group 19 trained there in early 1945 and went west in the late spring to Hawaii, but did not get into combat before the Japanese surrendered. At the end of the war Air Group 11 was on station along with the type training squadron VBF-151.

    There were also a couple of Marine Corps squadrons (VMF’s 214 and 452) assigned at Santa Rosa in 1944 which went out on USS Franklin (CV-13) and were there when the ship took her tremendous bomb damage on 19 March 1945. There were no aviators in either squadron (6 from VMF-214 and 2 from VMF-453) with the surname Franklin killed in that attack. Likewise, were none amongst the other three USMC aviators lost in the air during the deployment (all from VMF-214). I see no USMC aviators surnamed Franklin in any of the rosters of survivors for these two squadrons. No, I don’t have a list of USMC aviators as I do for the USN, that is a project for the future.


    Rich
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2018
  19. Jaap Vermeer MDE

    Jaap Vermeer MDE Active Member

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    I found an pilot Richard Franklin Bremicker,Navy pilot
     
  20. R Leonard

    R Leonard Member

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    Maybe, but we are looking for people with the surname Franklin, not a first or a middle name.

    Not on any of my lists . . . some 60,000 naval aviators, of course I may not have yet gotten to him. Can you provide more data? Might save me some trouble.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2018

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