ROBERT N. ROBERTSON, LT, USN

Robert Robertson '34

Date of birth: December 1, 1912

Date of death: January 10, 1943

Age: 30

Lucky Bag

From the 1934 Lucky Bag:

ROBERT NEAL ROBERTSON

Quanah, Texas

"Bob" "Bobbie" "Robbie"

LIKE most hopefuls from the wide open spaces, Bob arrived on the W.B.&A. carrying a bag of clothes and books which he soon found were of no use to him. When he first went up to be examined his heart beat so fast that they told him to lie on the floor and calm down.

After that scare he calmed down and caught onto the run of things pretty quickly, complaining only the first few days that he thought it would be a good idea to put mail chutes in all battalions instead of only putting them by the main office.

Bob always gets his 2.5 and surplus velvet to go with it, so he has plenty of time to do his dragging. He keeps repeating that he will do no more dragging for a long time but he meets some girl and weakens long enough to ask her to a hop.

As a wife he is all there, never argues except when he thinks some one shifted the I. C. O. R. Sign on him when he wasn't looking.

All things point to his getting on in the future and all hands wish him luck in trying it.

150 lb. Crew. 2 P.O.

ROBERT NEAL ROBERTSON

Quanah, Texas

"Bob" "Bobbie" "Robbie"

LIKE most hopefuls from the wide open spaces, Bob arrived on the W.B.&A. carrying a bag of clothes and books which he soon found were of no use to him. When he first went up to be examined his heart beat so fast that they told him to lie on the floor and calm down.

After that scare he calmed down and caught onto the run of things pretty quickly, complaining only the first few days that he thought it would be a good idea to put mail chutes in all battalions instead of only putting them by the main office.

Bob always gets his 2.5 and surplus velvet to go with it, so he has plenty of time to do his dragging. He keeps repeating that he will do no more dragging for a long time but he meets some girl and weakens long enough to ask her to a hop.

As a wife he is all there, never argues except when he thinks some one shifted the I. C. O. R. Sign on him when he wasn't looking.

All things point to his getting on in the future and all hands wish him luck in trying it.

150 lb. Crew. 2 P.O.

Loss

Bob was lost when USS Argonaut (APS 1) was sunk by a Japanese surface forces near Rabaul on January 10, 1943. He was executive officer at the time.

Other Information

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Robert graduated from Quanah high school in 1929. On November 4, 1939, at St. John’s church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he married Jeannette Philbrick, the daughter of the supply officer at the Portsmouth navy yard.
From the Vernon Daily Record, Vernon, Texas, May 25, 1939:

“Portsmouth, N. H., May 25. (AP) – It takes more than a tense situation to make a Navy man forget his manners. . .
“When Lieutenant Robert H. Robertson of Quanah, Texas, ascended a shore wharf Wednesday night after his rescue from the stricken submarine Squalus, he paused before a Coast Guardsman, clicked his heels and executed a smart salute.”

From the Portsmouth Herald, June 16, 1943:

Robert “received one of the posthumous letters of commendation by Rear Adm. Charles A. Lockwood, commander of submarine forces of the Pacific fleet . . . The citation now reports that:
“On a war patrol conducted by the USS Argonaut in heavily patrolled waters that vessel is known to have closed and delivered a successful attack against an enemy destroyer. As a result of a severe counter-attack the Argonaut was forced to break surface but with no regard to personal safety and in the face of imminent death, the officers and crew accepted destruction rather than surrender. This patrol of the Argonaut symbolic of the courageous, determined and aggressive conduct and spirit of self-sacrifice of the submarine personnel and serves as an inspiration to other submarines.”

His father J. Berry was an abstracter and a former city secretary, mother Nancy, sisters Nancy and Peggy, and brothers Francis and Lt. J. Berry Robertson, USN.

From Find A Grave:

Robert N. Robertson was the Navigation Officer of the submarine USS Squalus (SS 192) when she sunk on a test dive off Portsmouth, NH on May 23, 1939. 26 crewmen drowned in the flooding of the after compartments of the boat, but Robertson was among 33 who survived. They were rescued over the next two days by a diving bell.
Most of the Squalus crew worked on the salvage of the Squalus and Robertson and the entire officers and crew volunteered to serve on the refurbished Squalus, renamed Sailfish. However, the Navy had all officers re-assigned and only 4 Squalus crewmen sailed on the Sailfish.
Robertson was one four Squalus survivors lost in battle during WW II and the only one of the surviving officers to meet this fate.

On Eternal Patrol lists him as a recipient of the Bronze Star, but have been unable to find this citation.

His wife was listed as next of kin.

Photographs

Lt. Robert Robertson is pictured in the 1939 photo showing survivors of the crew of the submarine USS Squalus, which sunk on a test dive May 23, 1939. Twenty-six crewmen drowned in the accident while the remaining crew, photographed here, were rescued in heroic efforts by the Navy.
From the Fort Worth Star Telegram on May 26, 1939
From the Fort Worth Star Telegram on May 24, 1939 (1930 photograph)
From The Eagle on May 24, 1939

Bronze Star

From the Quanah (Texas) Tribune-Chief on September 26, 1946:

Bronze Star For Lost Hero

For heroic achievement as a diver engaged in salvage operations at Pearl Harbor, from Dec. 8 to 26, 1941, the late Lt. Robert N. Robertson, son of Mrs. J. B. Robertson, formerly of Qunanah, has been awarded posthumously the Bronze Star by Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, it was announced by headquarters of the First Naval District, Boston, Mass. His widow resides in Rye Center, N.H.
Lt. Robertson, engineering officer on the Squalus, was rescued from the sunken ship in May, 1939, on the second trip of the diving bell. On Feb. 18, 1943, he was reported missing in action in the Pacific. The officer was graduated from Texas Institute of Technology and from the U.S. Naval Academy.
The citation accompanying the posthumous award stated that, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lt. Robertson executed many hazardous dives amid jagged steel plating and other wreckage and inspected and repaired damaged vessels. "Undeterred by constant risk of fuel oil and ammunition explosions and the danger that the ships would capsize at any moment, Lt. Robertson boldly carried out his duties and by his superb skill and courage succeeded in patching underwater leaks and in recovering lost gear," the citation said.

(Clip courtesy Jim Sears on December 7, 2019.)

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.