STANLEY W. LIPSKI, CDR, USN

Stanley Lipski '35

Date of birth: July 8, 1913

Date of death: July 30, 1945

Age: 32

Lucky Bag

From the 1935 Lucky Bag:

STANLEY WALTER LIPSKI

Northampton, Massachusetts

"Leo"

HEY, mister, have you secured?" A very familiar question to the Fourth Classmen around these parts. Leo has a habit of taking a fatherly interest in those poor, downtrodden Plebes, and, of course, they appreciate it. Leo has an affable manner which enables him to get along with everyone except the Executive Department, who seems to put him on the spot quite frequently. Leo obtained his nickname back in Trigonometry when he demonstrated to Math profs how theorems were proven. One member of his section thought him so brave that he dubbed him "Leo, the Lion-Hearted." His advice to Plebes is, "get wise to the Academic Department before it gets wise to you, and you'll never bilge out."

Baseball 4. Soccer 4. Boxing 4, 2, 1. 1 P.O.

STANLEY WALTER LIPSKI

Northampton, Massachusetts

"Leo"

HEY, mister, have you secured?" A very familiar question to the Fourth Classmen around these parts. Leo has a habit of taking a fatherly interest in those poor, downtrodden Plebes, and, of course, they appreciate it. Leo has an affable manner which enables him to get along with everyone except the Executive Department, who seems to put him on the spot quite frequently. Leo obtained his nickname back in Trigonometry when he demonstrated to Math profs how theorems were proven. One member of his section thought him so brave that he dubbed him "Leo, the Lion-Hearted." His advice to Plebes is, "get wise to the Academic Department before it gets wise to you, and you'll never bilge out."

Baseball 4. Soccer 4. Boxing 4, 2, 1. 1 P.O.

Loss

Stanley was lost when USS Indianapolis (CA 35) was sunk by a Japanese submarine on July 30, 1945. He was the officer of the deck when the torpedo hit.

Other Information

His wife was listed as next of kin.

He is remembered at the U.S.S. Indianapolis National Memorial in Indiana, on a memory marker in Massachusetts, and at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.

Lipski Family Collection

The University of Massachusetts holds the Lipski Family Collection.

Antoni Lipski emigrated from Grodno, now Belarus, in 1907, and settled in the Oxbow neighborhood of Northampton, Mass. An employee of the Mount Tom Sulphite Pulp Company, he and his wife Marta had a family of twelve, ten of who survived to adulthood. Their oldest child Stanley Walter Lipski graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1935 and was killed in action aboard the USS Indianapolis in July 1945.
The slender record of two generations of a Polish immigrant family from Northampton, Mass., the Lipski collection includes two documents relating to Antoni Lipski and four photographs, two letters, and news clippings relating to his eldest son, Stanley Walter Lipski, a naval officer who was killed in action aboard the USS Indianapolis during the Second World War.
After emigrating to the mill town of Northampton, Mass., in 1907, Antoni Lipski adjusted to his new American life quickly. Born in Grodno (now Belarus) on March 6, 1882, Lipski settled in the Ox Bow neighborhood of Northampton looking southward toward Mt. Tom and began a long career working at Mount Tom Sulphite Pulp Company. In July 1909, he married 18 year-old Marta Maciejewska, a fellow immigrant and mill operative herself, and began a large family. When Martha died in 1928, just 37 years old, she left Antoni to care for ten children. Antoni died of leukemia in the Westfield State Sanitorium on Sept. 14, 1953.
A graduate of Northampton High School, the Lipskis’ eldest son Stanley Walter Lipski was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1935. Multilingual and an expert in the Russian language, Lipski served briefly at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla., before assignment to a succession of highly sensitive posts. He served in the American legation in Berlin until the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, and then went on to posts in Moscow, Riga, and Helsinki, where he served as assistant naval attache to Finland and Sweden.
In March 1943, Lipski was ordered to sea duty aboard the Portland-class cruiser USS Indianapolis, the flagship of the Fifth Fleet serving in the central Pacific. In 1945, the Indianapolis was designated to deliver Little Boy, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, from Honolulu to the staging site on Tinian island. Four days after delivering the bomb, the ship was struck by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine and sank in only 12 minutes, and in the greatest loss of life at sea in a single incident in American history, 880 members of the crew of 1,196 were killed in action. Lipski was severely injured in the initial blast, but died after a day in the water. He had earned nine battle stars, a Purple Heart, and Silver Star during his service.

Photographs

"Stan at the Hango [Hanko] front in Finland with the high ranking Finnish officers (the general) and Col. Huthsteiner, our Mil[itary] Attache. They could see the Russians across the Bay in Estonia." ca. 1940
ca. 1942
"Lt. Comdr. Stanley W. Lipski (far right) and other naval officers, ca. 1943"
"Although not identified, the woman in the photo appear likely to be Lipski's wife Sigrid Johnson, whom he married while stationed in Helsinki in August 1941." ca. 1943

Silver Star

Unable to find a citation for the Silver Star mentioned above.

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.