 |
| Storekeeper Third Class Charles Robinson was killed when a kamikaze plane sunk the USS Luce. https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3790546&ref=acom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Luce_(DD-522).jpg |
Charles Benjamin Robinson never had a chance to reach 100 years old today. Instead, he sacrificed his life for our freedom.
He was born on August 13, 1917 in North Dakota. His mother was born in Illinois and his father was born in Canada. His father worked as as a barber. Bennie had one older sister. He probably had no younger siblings. By 1940 Bennie was married to his wife Florence and they had one daughter. He had completed four years of high school and was still living in North Dakota where he worked as an automotive assistant manager. His mother was single at the time, likely due to widowhood. She lived in a nearby boarding house and worked as a hotel chamber maid.
I was unable to determine when Bennie joined the Navy but he became a storekeeper, third class on the USS Luce.
The Luce began its service in World War 2 in the fall on 1943. She first operated in the Alaska area. By the fall of 1944 it was operating in the South Pacific including the return to the Philippines.
On March 24, 1945 Luce left Leyte as part of Task Force 51 on a mission to bring heavy artillery to support the landings on Okinawa. On May 4, Japanese kamikaze planes spotted the Luce on radar picket duty. Two planes got through the flak and American fighter planes. The first was finally shot down by Luce but not before the bomb it was carrying exploded which resulted in a power failure that silenced her guns. The second kamikaze then crashed into the aft section of the ship. The port engine was knocked out, the rudder was jammed, and the engineering spaces were flooded. She sunk within minutes that caused the death of 126 of her crew, including SK3 Robinson.
His cenotaph grave is at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. His widow remarried after Bennie died and she passed away in 1991.
On behalf of the fallen, if you would like to see more people become aware of this project to honor the WW2 fallen, be sure to share with others on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thanks for your interest!
To mark having over 100,000 visits to my project to honor the fallen of WW2 on their 100th birthdate, I created this video to share. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXt8QA481lY
Join the public Facebook group WW2 Fallen 100
No comments:
Post a Comment