JACK B. BROWN, LT, USN

Jack Brown '40

Date of birth: January 30, 1917

Date of death: September 21, 1943

Age: 26

Lucky Bag

From the 1940 Lucky Bag:

JACK BARKSDALE BROWN

Eupora, Mississippi

Josh

Reveille never phases Josh; by eight o'clock he realizes daylight has come; noon finds him practically awake, and by four o'clock he is ready for a day's work. On wintry afternoons his "psychic bid" system has sent many a bridge partner to St. Elizabeth's. Academics are just another necessary evil, but well worth defeating; with this attitude he has given himself a good start in his Navy career. The originator of all "bad dope," Jack will probably turn his first skipper's hair gray by quietly informing him, in the midst of high speed maneuvers, that "The ship doesn't seem to answer the helm, Sir."

1 Stripe.

JACK BARKSDALE BROWN

Eupora, Mississippi

Josh

Reveille never phases Josh; by eight o'clock he realizes daylight has come; noon finds him practically awake, and by four o'clock he is ready for a day's work. On wintry afternoons his "psychic bid" system has sent many a bridge partner to St. Elizabeth's. Academics are just another necessary evil, but well worth defeating; with this attitude he has given himself a good start in his Navy career. The originator of all "bad dope," Jack will probably turn his first skipper's hair gray by quietly informing him, in the midst of high speed maneuvers, that "The ship doesn't seem to answer the helm, Sir."

1 Stripe.

Loss

Josh was lost in a USN Lockheed PV-1 Ventura patrol bomber crash on the Marquesas Keys Bombing & Gunnery Range on September 21, 1943. The aircraft was assigned to VB-2 OTU-1 and was based at NAS Lake City.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Father J. Howard was a physician in private practice in Eupora, Mississippi. Mother Vivian. Brothers Randolph, William and Thomas. Sister Sara. He was married to the former Marjorie Maberry.

He is buried in Mississippi.

Photographs

From the Lucky Bag
From The Kansas City Times on November 3, 1943

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.