A Look Back

Just received the 1944 Bluejacket's Manuel in the mail from eBay this noon! That was a quick ship! It would have been the edition my grandfather used when he joined the Navy and sailed on the USS Roi in the later parts of WWII. It is generations away from the one I read last year, and includes how to man a turret gun, how to do calisthenics with your M1 Garand... and identifications for US Navy ships, from carriers (CV) and Battleships (BB) all the way down to a rubber landing craft. And I loved the page with "Flags of Major Maritime Nations" that included (obviously) a Nazi flag, the Imperial Italian flag, the USSR (with a "man-of-war" flag that I'd never seen before) and a Imperial "rising sun" Japanese flag. It's just incredibly awesome to hold that in print in your hands and remember how frightening that must have been then. USS Roi only had one battle star. I think they shot down a Japanese plane. It was a small transport carrier that only served the last couple years.