Allan Christie Edmands I

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Allan, his siblings, and his wife were part of the heroic, civic-minded Greatest Generation. His parents were part of the reactive Lost Generation. His older two children were part of the adaptive Silent Generation, and his youngest child was part of the idealistic Boom Generation.

Intrepid, rebellious, playful, outdoor loving, quite tall for a man of that time (6 feet 2.5 inches) and slightly uncoordinated. During his early years, Allan lived with his parents and older sister, Jean, in a stone cabin his father built in North Reading, Massachusetts. (The pictures show the cabin and little Allan with his sister. You can see enlargements by clicking the pictures.) Later they moved to Andover, Massachusetts.

According to Jean, Allan was very business-minded and enterprising. Even as a child he took pawn pledges from his schoolmates.

Beginning when Allan was ten years old, his father deathly ill with kidney problems, he and his younger brother, John, lived for a couple of years with their Uncle Ellis and Aunt Annie in remote, rural Vermont. Probably from this experience, Allan developed a great love of the outdoors, especially long mountain hikes.

Allan attended Punchard High School in Andover, somehow earning the nickname "Dinkie" among his classmates. During the summer of 1928, between his Junior and Senior years, Allan received basic infantry training at Fort McKinley in Maine. Meanwhile, his father was very ill with his two-decade-long kidney ailment, a form of nephritis then termed Bright's disease (and curable today). Here is a family picture with Allan in the upper left (click the picture to enlarge it). In the autumn of Allan's Senior year, his father finally died.

Allan did not participate much in school activities at Punchard, but he was in the glee club and the Senior Class play. Here is his Senior Class picture (click it to enlarge it). Allan graduated from Punchard in 1929 and, through his late father's connections, obtained a job with the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad.

Unfortunately, the railroad went bankrupt with the onset of the Great Depression, and on March 1, 1930, Allan, a newly laid-off kid not quite 19 years old, tried to enlist into the Army. The Army recruitment office in Lawrence, Massachusetts, was closed, however, so he walked across the street to the Navy office, which was open, and enlisted. (His mother at first resisted signing the permission slip.) Here is a picture of Allan as a seaman (click it to enlarge it).

During his first year as a seaman, he became a candidate for officer's training at the U.S. Naval Academy Prep School in Hampton Roads, Virginia. President Herbert Hoover authorized Naval Academy appointments to all the students who graduated from the training. So, in June 1931, Allan became a Midshipman at Annapolis.

As a Middie, he was able to morph his high school nickname into "Deak" or "Deacon." He participated in winter afternoon football and lacrosse. He also became adept at billiards. He loved sailing and was fascinated with astronomy. (Click the picture to enlarge it.)

At the end of his Junior year, he and another Middie consented to take part in a blind double date, arranged by a graduating upperclassman, Fred Hawes, and Fred's girlfriend, Jane Doyle. As it turned out, Allan didn't seem to have much in common with his date and spent the entire time talking to the other Middie's date, Fred's younger sister, Mary Anna Hawes, just barely 17 years old. (Mary was visiting Annapolis all the way from her home in Centralia, Washington, with her mother and her brother Tom; they were attending Fred's graduation ceremonies.) During the evening, there was a partner switching among the blind double daters. Allan and Mary had a wonderful time, but much too quickly the evening was over-- and soon thereafter, Mary was on her way back west.

Allan couldn't get Mary out of his mind, however, and during his Senior year he sent her a Christmas card, inaugurating an ever-more-romantic correspondence. Allan graduated from the Academy in June 1935, the same month Mary graduated from high school. Somehow, when Allan found himself stationed at the Bremerton, Washington, naval base, Mary managed to enroll in a business school a ferry ride across Puget Sound in Seattle. Numerous ferry rides later, in June 1937, after Allan finished a cruise on the destroyer U.S.S. Boggs to Alaska and Hawaii, the two were married in San Diego, California. (They might have been married sooner were it not for a Navy requirement that Annapolis graduates wait two years before getting hitched.) They set up a home in San Diego, and their first child, Christine, was born there 11 months later.

Allan was noted for his mischievous sense of humor. For example, his sister-in-law remembered an extended family dinner where she handed her plate to Allan and asked him for seconds on the mashed potatoes and gravy. "How much would you like?" asked Allan. "Just a little bit, please," was the response. Allan very delicately put about an eighth of a teaspoon of mashed potatoes topped with a tiny drop of gravy on her plate and handed it back.

Another sister-in-law remembered the following anecdotes: They would all be sitting around, reading or chatting quietly, and suddenly out of the blue, Allan would roar out the open window: "I don't care WHAT the neighbors think!" Or they would all be sitting around, bored, wondering what to do, and suddenly Allan would brighten: "I know what let's do!" Eager, they'd all look at him to share his inspiration. "Let's all go brush our teeth!"

One of Allan's favorite snack foods was dried prunes. On the left is a picture of him eating prunes by the fountain at Avalon, Catalina Island, just after his wedding, and in one of his last letters to his mother in 1945 he discussed getting a package of prunes on an excursion into the California Redwoods. Allan also enjoyed smoking a pipe. (Click either picture to enlarge it.)

After his promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade and short spells of duty on the destroyer U.S.S. Chandler, including some time in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1940 Allan was assigned flight training at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.

Allan graduated his flight training the following year, receiving his "wings," and was stationed at the Naval Air Station in San Pedro, California, and assigned duty on cruiser U.S.S. Astoria in Cruiser Scouter Squadron 6 in the Twelfth Naval District. As a flyer, Allan assumed the nickname "Ace," an acronym of his initials. (Click the picture to see it enlarged.)

[ Mary, Janie, and Christine in Honolulu, July 1941 ]

In the summer of 1941, Ace was stationed at Pearl Harbor, and Mary and Christine were moved to Honolulu to join him. As Ace was away on duty so much, Mary was happy to have her friend and sister-in-law Janie Doyle Hawes move in. Here is a picture of Mary, Janie, and Christine walking on the sidewalk in Honolulu (click the picture to enlarge it).

On December 7 of that year, while Ace was out at sea on the Astoria, Japanese bombers attacked. Mary, now three months pregnant with their second child (me), and Christine, just three and a half years old, were able to experience the "Day of Infamy" firsthand. In later years, Mary would often say that December 7 was the first day she felt her expected baby kick, and she would refer to the baby (who, she was sure, was male) as her "rising son," a pun on the Japanese Rising Sun naval battle flag.

According to a commemorative issue of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Christmas 1941 in Hawaii was not a time to rejoice. "Martial law was in effect, Army and Navy dependents were evacuated and some local Japanese were incarcerated. . . ."

The Christmas lights strung along Nuuanu Avenue, one of the main shopping districts, [had] all been torn down or turned off. The new bikes, wagons and dolls that would have been Christmas presents were still sitting on docks in San Francisco, shoved aside as the weapons and supplies of war were shipped to Honolulu. In San Francisco, the first shipload of evacuees from Hawaii landed on Christmas Day. Some of the women were new widows, others didn't know what happened to their husbands. Each morning on the ship, they rolled bandages and dressings for the gravely wounded from Pearl Harbor who were aboard. For most on Oahu, Christmas was a military-ordered work day. It was a time of deep worry and fear. No one wanted to be the target of another Japanese attack. . . . First at Nuuanu Cemetery and then at other sites, the military buried more than 2,500 young men killed in [the attack]. Local gardens gave up their red poinsettias and hibiscus for small bouquets on each grave. Even as they grieved, civilians feared another invasion by Japan; indeed, enemy submarines were sporadically shelling island ports and harbors. Within a month of the attack, 20,000 Army and Navy dependents and 10,000 island women and children left Hawaii, fearing for their safety. The Matson freighter Lahaina was set ablaze by a submarine on Dec. 11 and its lifeboat did not reach Maui until Dec. 21. Another Matson freighter, the Manini, had been sunk by a torpedo. By Christmas, all islanders over age 6 were being fingerprinted. As early as 1:30 p.m. Dec. 7-- a mere 5 1/2 hours after the attack-- printing presses had begun churning out military-issued civilian ID cards. It was a contingency the U.S. military had planned but feared: The cards were to be used to identify dead in case of another attack. (1)

Richard Borreca in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 13 September 1999.
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Americans in Hawaii expected the Japanese to land an occupying force on the islands any day. The word HAWAII in brown ink was printed on all the paper currency that banks on the islands issued; occupiers would not be able to spend American money.

Ace, newly promoted to Lieutenant, was now fully a warrior and deeply involved in the desperate preparations for the American military response to the attack. He had scant leave to be with his anxious family. His wife, daughter, and unborn baby (due to arrive on Ace's 31st birthday) were among the thousands of civilians waiting anxiously for shipment back to the mainland.

Finally, in April 1942--while Ace was sailing toward Australia--his family were on a ship to San Francisco. From there they went to Mary's parents' home, the chicken ranch on Waunch's Prairie, just north of Centralia, Washington. Meanwhile, Ace was participating in the Battle of the Coral Sea to protect the Australian shipping lanes. Just a few weeks later, Ace was flying missions from the Astoria in the Battle of Midway. His new son, named for him and nicknamed "Butch" rather than "Junior," was born in Centralia a couple of days after the successful end of this battle (and a day before Ace's birthday).

Ace's younger brother, John, was also at Midway, as a fresh Annapolis graduate aboard the U.S.S. Hughes. He later told the story of how Ace had signaled to him from his plane. Captain Ramsay, skipper of the Hughes, got excited and ordered John to decode the message. The skipper was upset when he learned the text of the message: "Regards to Ensign Edmands."

Ace continued missions from the Astoria during the Battle of Guadalcanal that summer until it was sunk off Savo Island; you can see his personal report of the battle. He was then ordered to Fleet Air Commander West Coast in San Diego and soon after to Alameda Escort Scouting Squadron 23 (in 1943 the name was changed to Composite Squadron 19).

Before reporting for this new assignment, however, Ace went up to Centralia on leave to retrieve his family and to move them down to San Diego. (The mashed-potato business probably occurred during a family dinner on the chicken ranch.)

In 1943, Ace was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and became skipper of Composite Squadron 60. He was ordered to the Eleventh Naval District, San Diego, and saw combat in the Battle of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, flying off the converted aircraft carrier U.S.S. Suwanee. Here is Ace's personal report of a "hunter-killer" operation. His family was living in Coronado and San Diego, California, while Ace was off to sea, incommunicado for months at a time. Whenever he was home, however, a lot of pictures were taken. Here are Ace and Mary in Coronado in May 1943 (click the picture to enlarge it).

On June 25, 1944, Ace was ordered to Fleet Air, West Coast, as skipper of Torpedo Squadron 5 (VT5, the Torpcats), stationed at Alameda and Santa Rosa Naval Air Stations and practicing maneuvers at Monterey (torpedo practice), Arcata (rocket practice), and Modesto (night flying). (To see a picture of the VT5 pilots, all of them officers, click the Torpcats insignia to the right.) VT5 was part of Air Group 5, which also consisted of the VB5 dive bomber squadron and the VF5 fighter squadron.

Meanwhile, his third child, daughter Janna, was born at the U.S. Navy hospital in La Jolla, California, just north of San Diego. Ace was able to join his family in San Diego, at the home they had purchased, for a short time during the autumn. Here is a picture of Ace with his son, two-year-old Butch, on the trike he got for an early Christmas present (click to enlarge). On the last day of November, Mary and Butch traveled to Santa Rosa and stayed with Ace for seven weeks (Christine and baby Janna were being looked after by sister-in-law Janie).

The demands of Ace's work, leading his squadron flying their new TBM Avenger torpedo planes in monotonous anti-submarine practice exercises and ensuring that they would be able to land safely on carriers at night, kept him very busy, though. Mary and Butch had to part from him in San Francisco on January 17, 1945, the last they saw of him.

Ace, according to a letter he sent his mother, "went aboard a carrier with the boys to qualify. . . am back in [Santa Rosa] now for a week or so. Getting ready to go out." Taking a day off at the end of the month, Ace relieved stress by walking several miles and hitchhiking to Guerneyville and Rio Nido in the Redwoods.

[ The new Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Franklin (CV13) ]

On February 7, 1945, the Air Group 5 squadrons embarked from Alameda, California, for Hawaii. There they would connect with (and ship out on) the Essex-class carrier U.S.S. Franklin (CV13), part of the Task Force 58 armada assaulting the Japanese home islands--all in preparation for the Battle of Okinawa and then the "final push" on Japan. The Franklin, under the command of Captain Leslie E. Gehres, was the flagship for the task force's subgroup, Task Group 58.2, and the group's commanding officer, Rear Admiral Ralph E. Davison, was on board.

En route, Ace's squadron was stationed for a week at Kaneohe Marine Air Station in Oahu, and there they continued night carrier landing practice. Captain Gehres had been displeased with the poor performance of the air group's takeoffs and landings, and he continued to unleash his notoriously bad temper until the plane crews improved. Here is a picture of Ace on the beach at Kaneohe during a break from the intense practice (click to enlarge it).

During that week, on February 14, Ace was able to send another letter to his mother, in which he told her he would like to learn to play a musical instrument, such as a clarinet. His mother replied on February 28, the day she received his letter, that a co-worker of hers at the Andover Press would sell him a clarinet.

"I never knew you wanted to learn any musical instrument," she wrote, "but couldn't have bought you one anyway I guess when you were growing up. We sure had little enough to live on but you got by and I only wish now that Dad was here to see how well you are doing. . . . I wish Mary and the children were nearer so I could help them out now and then. Also wish I could have a snapshot of the baby. Hope you keep safe and well. Lots of love, Mother." This letter was mailed on March 1 but was returned, unopened and undelivered, the first week of June.

The armada proceeded westward from Hawaii, across the International Date Line, and beyond communication with loved ones. They continued to the Ulithi Atoll staging area in the western Pacific and then almost due northward to a position less than 60 miles east of the Japanese home islands.

On March 18 Ace's torpedo squadron made two successful raids against targets on the island of Kyushu, including the harbor at Kagoshima. Each of the two raids was made by a different half of the squadron, one half led by Ace, the other by his executive officer (second in command), Lieutenant Charles Carr.

Early on the following morning, Monday, March 19 (it was Sunday the 18th in the U.S.), the VT5 pilots met in the ready room to learn the designated targets for the day. Lt. Carr's half of the squadron was scheduled to fly the first raid, scheduled for about 7 am, and Ace's half the second, at noontime. When Ace discovered that the target of the morning raid was to be Kobe Harbor, where the remnants of the Japanese fleet, including the giant battleship Yamato and the carrier Amagi, were reported to be hiding, he bumped Lt. Carr to noon. Ace wanted to get first crack at the ships and subs there.

Before leaving the ready room, the pilots heard a prayer and received a blessing from Father Joseph T. O'Callahan.

At 7 am, Ace and his pilots were warming up their fully gassed and armed torpedo planes on the flight deck, Ace's plane in front of the squadron, their wings having just unfolded, in position for takeoff. The fighters of the combat air patrol, whose mission was to protect the ships from enemy planes, had already launched. Now the 31 planes of Air Group 5--F4U Corsairs fighters each with a 1,100-pound 10-foot-long Tiny Tim rocket capable of splitting an enemy ship in half, SB2C Helldiver and TBF and TBM Avenger bombers each with four 500-pound bombs, and the Avenger torpedo bombers of VT5 in the rear--began to launch. Lieutenant Robert H. Frank, in charge of plane maintenance, was stationed midship behind the flight deck officer, approving (or sometimes disapproving) each plane's launch by the sound of its revving engine.

At 0707, disaster struck: A single Japanese radial-engine "Judy" bomber dropped two 500-pound armor-piercing bombs on the carrier flight deck, piercing it and exploding on the hangar deck below. Blast waves from underneath caused the planes to bounce and careen over the flight deck, their whirling propellers tearing into other planes and gruesomely killing some of the VT5 crew who were running for cover. Aviation fuel gushed out of the ruptured plane gas tanks. Thick, greasy smoke was everywhere; some of the men fell into the gaping holes caused by the bombs.(2)

Lt. Wallace Young (USN Ret.), who had been an Ensign in VT5 (Torpedo Squadron 5) and Ace's wingman at the time (0707 local time) of the March 19 attack, has an alternate theory of the attack, disputing the official version. Young, considered a crackpot by other Franklin survivors, claims that there was only one 1000-lb. bomb, for example. [See Wally Young's story.] Young has not been the only witness to dispute the official version and insist that there was only a single bomb; see Inferno: The Epic Life and Death Struggle of the USS Franklin in World War II by Joseph A. Springer (St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Company / Zenith Press, 2007), especially Appendix B, "The Bombing Attack," pp. 325ff.
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Already the bomb blasts had begun to ignite the 17,000 gallons of airplane fuel on the flight deck, the 9,000 gallons on the gassed planes on the hangar deck, and many of the American bombs, Tiny Tim rockets, and other ordnance on the ship. Huge fires raged, and blasts from some 200,000 pounds of explosive material rocked the Franklin for hours, causing it to list some 13 degrees to starboard and nearly finishing it off.

Some people reported seeing Ace leave his plane and jettison his bombs, pushing them off the ship before they had a chance to ignite.

Amazingly, about 40 minutes after the ship had first been hit, Ace, not wounded, made it to the landing signal officer's station at the port stern of the flight deck (click the picture to see where this is), and several of his squadron got there as well. Forward from there was an inferno of thick smoke, raging fire, and continuing explosions. Lieutenant Frank, after cutting off the engines of some abandoned planes, grabbed some life rafts and worked his way through the smoke back to the stern. He saw three officers there, including Ace, and gave them the rafts; he then went forward again to get more rafts.

A crew member (possibly Ensign Charles McAllister) asked Ace: "Skipper, what shall we do now?" Ace responded that since there was no way to go forward, they would probably have to go over the side, a drop of about 90 feet.

Just then, as if to oblige, a huge explosion occurred at their position, blowing men off the ship. Ace was never seen alive again. When Lieutenant Frank returned with more life rafts, Ace and the other officers were gone.

Several weeks later, the Navy Department sent Mary a telegram stating that Ace was "missing"; Ace's mother received a similar telegram.

Lt. Carr, Ace's executive office who now took over the VT5 squadron, wrote to Mary soon after she had received the telegram, informing her that Ace's Naval Academy ring had been "recovered from" his room and that his dog tags were "found" later--no doubt a fib to soften the gruesome facts: Ace had not been able to remove his ring from his finger, and no serviceman is ever without his dog tags, especially in a combat zone, especially when strapped in a plane ready to take off on a bombing mission.

So what must have happened?

We must presume that the terrific explosion near the port stern killed Ace as it blew him overboard and that his remains were discovered among the many bodies near the ship, floating in their "Mae West" life preservers. The ring and dog tags must have been retrieved from the remains and served to identify Ace. The remains were then "buried at sea," as were the bodies and body parts of all of the 835 men killed that day out of the approximately 3,000 men aboard.

Amazingly, the Franklin made it back on April 26 to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York Harbor with a skeleton crew of 704, but bringing home the remains of the hundreds of men was out of the question.

In October, seven months after the attack and nearly two months after Japan's surrender, the Navy Department sent Mary a second telegram presuming that Ace had been killed in action on March 19 as a result of enemy action; as before, Ace's mother received a similar telegram. In contrast to what is portrayed in the movies, there was no personal visit by a superior officer.(3)

Ace's mother, Mary Caroline Findley Edmands, 1887-1970, wrote inquiry letters to at least two Franklin survivors who had received a great deal of publicity after the ship made it all the way back to the Brooklyn NY Navy shipyard. She received replies from Captain Leslie Gehres, skipper of the Franklin, and from Father Joseph O'Callahan, Lt.Comdr., who was decorated for his exceptional valor during the disaster.
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Ace's death, like every death of a loved one, had a profound, long-lasting effect on all those who knew him. Because Ace never had a regular burial or funeral, a good deal of mystery surrounded his death, a mystery that for some of those left behind prolonged the stages of grief described by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and elaborated by others: Shock, denial, anger and anxiety, bargaining and guilt, letting go, and acceptance.

Ace was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, the American Defense Service Medal-- Fleet Clasp, the Asiatic-Pacific Area Campaign Medal with five bronze stars, the Philippine Liberation Campaign Ribbon, a Combat Action Ribbon, and a World War II Victory Medal. Mary received a letter "in grateful memory" of Ace "signed" by President Roosevelt (who had recently died).

Every year for decades, Ace's mother contributed money for Punchard High School in Andover to issue excellence-in-math awards in Ace's name to graduating seniors.

In 2001 Ace's first cousin, Nelson Wilfred "Sonny" Edmands (son of Ace's Uncle Nelson Edmands), himself a World War II veteran who had been in the Army at Schofield Barracks during the Pearl Harbor attack and had participated in General MacArthur's assault force on Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, donated an interment flag in honor of Ace at the "Avenue of Flags" wall in Hawaii's Punchbowl Cemetery.

In 2003, Jim Stuart, a Franklin survivor (see his story, "Saving Seaman Stuart") who had been helping Ace's son, Allan, Jr., find surviving VT5 crew members to interview, asked his Congressman to have a U.S. flag flown over the Capitol in Washington, DC, in honor of Ace. He then sent the 3-by-5-foot embroidered flag, with the accompanying certificate to Allan, Jr., with the following note from him and his wife: "Dear Allan, It is my honor and pleasure to present your 'Capitol-flown' flag to you and your family in the humble presence of your gallant, heroic, and outstanding father. He did help save our land, our country and generations of Americans. He gave everything so that all the rest of us could go on. I am humble in his continuing spirit. Our very best, Jim and Jan Stuart."

Go to vital statistics, sources, and notes on Allan Christie Edmands I

Year by year in the life of Allan Christie Edmands I

The childhood of Allan Christie Edmands I, in its historical context
The teen years of Allan Christie Edmands I, in their historical context
The historical context of Allan Christie Edmands I's life (age 20 through 29)
The historical context of Allan Christie Edmands I's life (age 30 until his death)

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