This is off-topic, but prior to his USN service on submarine chasers, Lt. George S. Dole and his twin brother Louis had notable wrestling careers. George Dole won an Olympic gold medal at the 1908 London games. In response to some inquiries from a trustee of the Wrestling Hall of Fame, I have started to post some scans of documents from the Dole twins' wrestling careers.
Those of you who are familiar with the small set of books written by chaser commanders and crewmen will no doubt recall Maverick Navy, by chaser commander Alexander Moffat. Much earlier than the publishing of this book, Moffat submitted a short piece to The Subchaser Club newsletter, titled "Beating the Game," the story of how Ens. Moffat finagled his way to an early trip home. Just posted to In the Great War is an audio podcast reading of this account. [Editor's note: In the Great War is no longer active.]
As I mentioned last month, I will be offering a lecture and slides on chasers and their role in the Allied victory in WWI, with a book signing afterward. The tie-in is Veterans Day, based, of course, on Armistice Day, 11 November 1918; but the main point of the presentation is to cover early ASW technology and the role of the U.S. submarine chasers in the war.
There will also be a small display of chaser-related photos and other items. Hope to see some of you there! Since old photographs make up a considerable part of this site, I'm often asked about techniques for getting a decent digital image of old photos. This month I posted some pages on Photographing and Scanning Old Photos and Documents. In my work, the objective is usually either (a) to make very high-quality digital images of old, sometimes damaged photos; or (b) to copy a large collection of documents quickly and inexpensively. Speaking of scanning: This month there are a few photos posted from the collection of Henry Miller, a chaser crewman on SC 208. I have been working on scanning this collection, photos from which are (and will be) posted courtesy of his daughter-in-law, Bobbie Miller. Much more coming soon. Of particular interest is that Henry Miller made good use of a pen, and captioned most of the photos. Not only does this take away much of the typical burden of detective work in identifying the items in the collection, but where there is overlap with other photo sets, helps fill in some gaps in what is already here. --Todd Woofenden, Editor
The set of photos of service on subchaser SC 83 have been split into two separate photo sets:
In the crew photo set are several recently-posted photos, including a shot of crewmen around the Y-gun with "a pill for Kaiser Bill" painted on the depth charge.
SC 83 photos courtesy of Jane Kingsbury Burne, daughter of Roger Kingsbury, radio electrician on SC 83.
