Fairly often, people contact me asking about a particular chaser crewman or officer, or about a particular boat. Sometimes these questions are in the form of, "can you tell me which chaser Bob Smith served on?" and, unfortunately the answer is almost always "not without more information," given that many thousand men served on these boats, and almost none of the records are digitized and searchable.

But when there is a bit more information, such as the chaser number, a photo to reference, or even a letter or anecdote, it's frequently possible to find something. Often this is thanks to everyone who has contributed content for this site: There will be a photo scan, a story, or some document of interest, submitted years earlier by someone else with an interest in the person, the chaser, or just the general subject of chasers in WWI.

A recent example:

Just posted this month is a scan of the original Navy Cross citation for Ens. Andrew Joseph Kelley, USNRF, who served as CO of subchaser SC 337, submitted by Bob Gill, who is researching Ens. Kelley. While I couldn't offer any fine detail -- no photo of Kelley, unfortunately -- the Archives do contain a few items that I hope he found useful (a muster roll, a scan of the Ship Movements page for SC 337, showing ports and dates, etc.).

In the long term, some day someone else might get in touch, with a photo or other information about this chaser officer, and it will be a pleasure to get in touch with Mr. Gill again, to pass along the information.

So: Thanks again to everyone who has contributed, and also please get in touch, if you are looking for information about a chaser crewman, a chaser, or something else chaser-related. Maybe someone else is doing research that would be of use.

--Todd Woofenden, editor