Lucky Bag Yearbook

From the 1939 Lucky Bag:

FRANK DONALD MILLER

Don

Swimming 4, 3, 2, 1, N.A.; Company Small Bore 3, 2, 1; Track 4; 2 Stripes.

Don is one of those amazing fellows from the Middle West, where water is used only for drinking purposes, who still is able to grasp a knowledge of the sea immediately. But not only is he a good coxswain of a boat, he’s a pacer in classes and athletics, doing everything with effortless ease. He is always willing to help anyone in anything they are doing, and he helps in such an unobtrusive manner that no one feels obliged to him, and as a consequence, he has a multitude of intimate friends. Don’s favorite pastimes are complicated variations of diving, writing letters, dragging, and playing a hand of Rummy. Such a versatile fellow will be a valuable asset to our Navy.

Loss

Frank was lost while piloting a F4F-4 Wildcat fighter of Fighting Squadron (VF) 10, operating from USS Enterprise (CV 6), on October 25, 1942.

From naval aviation historian Richard Leonard via email on July 17, 2018:

Frank Donald “Don” Miller (82652) - VF-10 USS Enterprise. Not killed in action. As darkness fell, while returning from a no-contact strike, Battle of Santa Cruz, his F4F lost power about 40 miles NW of TF-61 and fell out of formation on the evening of 10/26/1942. His plane was seen to hit the water and he was observed to bail out prior, but he was never recovered.

Other Information

His wife was listed as next of kin.

Frank has a memory marker in Kansas.

Photographs

From the Lucky Bag

Navy Directories & Officer Registers

The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.

The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.

The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together, or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.