Most of the time when I use the term “history in a box”, I’m talking about wargames. But today I mean a different kind of history – real historical documentation, this time in a box full of old photographs.
A few days back I posted a photo of USS Staten Island that my Dad took when he was a Navy photographer. I’ve got a box full of ‘em, mostly from the ship’s 1953 Arctic cruise, but a few of them from 1952. When he was leaving the service Dad originally had a lot more photos, negatives, chromes and 16mm movie reels. Unfortunately, hardly any of them remained after his car was broken into just outside Boston Navy Yard.
I’ve seen more than the photos I have in my possession, including a journal or two stuffed with photos and tall tales from the far North. But I haven’t seen them in years and I’ve no idea where they might have gotten off to after Dad passed away a couple of years ago.
Arctic cruise yearbook, 1953
Just to show off a bit of my history in a box, I’m going to toss up a few images. The first is the cover from a thin staple-bound booklet – sort of a yearbook – that’s packed with photos from the 1953 Arctic cruise of AGB-5. Truth be told, the cover treatment reminds me of the same paper stock that was used in my similarly staple-bound yearbook from junior high school about 20 years later. Small world.
Next are scans of a couple of pages from the cruise yearbook. These cover Operation Mushrat – the launch of high-altitude sounding rockets from balloon platforms. While the “Rockoon” program pioneered by James A. Van Allen is documented in a number of places, little coverage is given to the ships and crews that performed that actual launches. I’ve found a few fleeting sources on the Internet that date the launches and platforms, but even some of those are in error.
Mushrat: Sounding rockets launched from USS Staten Island in 1953
In a couple of sources that I’ve found, the 1953 launch program is credited to the USCGC Eastwind WAGB-279, a sister ship of Staten Island (which later became WAGB-278 in Coast Guard service). I think this yearbook makes it pretty clear that USS Staten Island was the launch platform for at least part of the 1953 firing program (there were about 19 or 20 launches during the summer of 1953).
Man-handling a sounding rocket aboard USS Staten Island in 1953
Just setting the record straight. And it still looks darned cold.
There’s a science paper published on the results of this, Ellis et al 1954, Phys Rev 95,147, which explains that some of the flights that year were launched from Staten Island and some from Eastwind.
I have Staten Island as “AGB-5″ in my list at http://host.planet4589.org/space/lvdb/launch/Deacon and http://host.planet4589.org/space/lvdb/launch/Loki. Are you saying I should really be calling it WAGB-278?
I have Staten Island launches in 1953 and 1955. But some sources suggest there were also launches from it in 1957. I would be very interested to see any references to this, and to any maps of the cruises for any of these expeditions.
Thanks, Jonathan McDowell; planet4589 at gmail
@Jonathan
During her US Navy years, USS Staten Island’s hull number was AGB-5. The WAGB hull number was put in place when she entered Coast Guard service. There’s a photo of Staten Island in Arctic ice somewhere up-thread that shows the numbering AGB-5 – and I’ve got a bunch more photos of same.
The 1953 cruise book is the only one I have. My Dad was out of the Navy by the 1955 Arctic cruise.