The Roundtable
Forum
Official
Newsletter of the Battle of Midway
Roundtable
10 June 2011
Issue
Number: 2011-14
Our 14th Year
~
SPECIAL ISSUE ~
This issue of The Roundtable Forum is devoted to the memory
of our friend and long-time Roundtable member, Captain Frank Lewis “DeLo”
DeLorenzo, U.S. Navy Retired. DeLo
left on his final sortie on Friday, 27 May 2011, at the age of 96.
In the Beginning
DeLo was born in August 1914. If you need a little perspective on how long ago that was, it was
the first month of World War 1 in Europe. That made him the Roundtable’s senior member (in terms of
sunrises logged), just a little ahead of Dusty Kleiss. He was a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin ,
and earned his JD (law) degree at Marquette University in 1939.
Naval Career
DeLo entered the Navy shortly after college, and was
appointed to flight training at Pensacola.
Posted to patrol bombers, he initially flew PBYs, then the four-engine
PB2Y Coronado, including his well-known assignment in December 1941 to
transport Admiral Nimitz to Pearl Harbor as the new CINCPAC. That story is covered in detail in Chapter 2
of No Right to Win and on various web sites. He also had a brief experience with the Flying Tigers—see Bill
Vickrey’s message below.
DeLo flew extensive patrol missions throughout the war, plus
a number of bombing strikes against Japanese installations on Wake Island and
in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. At
the war’s end, he had been awarded the Air Medal with four gold stars. After the war he continued an active career
in Naval Aviation, serving in a variety of training and operational commands
through the Korean and Vietnam wars. He
retired in 1970 as a captain after 31 years of service, with a host of awards
and over 6000 hours of flying time. He
made his home in retirement at Pensacola.
Much of the foregoing comes from his detailed on-line
obituary, which you can read
here.
The Roundtable
DeLo was an active member and supporter of the Roundtable
through most of its existence, being among the first to come aboard when Bill
Price’s e-mail circular went public in 1997.
While not a BOM veteran as we usually define it, it was an easy choice
for him due to his strong associations among Naval Air retirees, including a
few veterans of the battle. Looking
back in our e-mail archives, I note that he was the first to encourage me to
take over the Roundtable in October 2002 when Bill Price had to pass the con to
someone. Thereafter, we heard from DeLo
regularly, in good times and bad, like the many months he spent in cramped
quarters through much of 2005, waiting for his home to be rebuilt after being
flooded by Hurricane Ivan. (While he
was waiting for that, he had to take cover again when Hurricane Katrina roared
past.)
DeLo’s last message to us came in July of last year, in
which he expressed gratitude for the notation about his upcoming 96th birthday
in The Roundtable Forum. At that
time he proudly said that he still drives his car, rides a bike every day, and
manages to stay out of bars. Instead,
he said, he spends way too much time on the computer. We can be thankful that he did.
Comments from Members
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ronald W.
Graetz
California
BOM Vet, radioman-gunner, VT-6, USS Enterprise (CV-6)
I didn't know DeLo, but I heard his name a lot; always well spoken
of. My hat is off Frank, and my heart goes out to the family.
This old world just lost another GREAT One!
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From: SFC
Edgar R. Fox, USA-Ret
Missouri
BOM vet, Pvt., 6th MarDefBn, Midway
I and my students are going to miss Captain DeLo. In
the years past when I had a question put to me by a student that I could
not answer, we would ask the Captain.
He would come back with an answer that would satisfy the class. DeLo never failed to surprise me with a
memento to be offered to the class, such as a model kit of an SBD or TBF. Of my 8th grade students who have gone on to
higher and greater achievements, I am sure they are better informed of the Navy
and its ships.
Thank you "Captain
DeLo." We may call on you again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: John
Greaves
Canada
My friend Owen Miller, who is close to Pensacola and the National Naval
Aviation Museum, had the following to say on an internet warbird forum. With his permission, I'd like to include
this in the comments [about DeLo]:
"As
you may know CAPT DeLorenzo volunteered in restoration at NNAM for many
years. Recently he had been in hospice
care. Thursday (May 26th), NNAM held a
brief dedication ceremony for the Coronado. Frank was there in a suit and
tie and in a wheelchair. His family was
there, everybody shook his hand, the gals hugged him, and he was just
beaming. They got him back to hospice,
got him settled into bed, as he was worn out from the days events—and he
never woke up; died the next morning.
He was waiting for that plane.
“The
ceremony was recorded. Hopefully it will wind up on the internet, perhaps on
NNAM's Facebook page."
In
his honor, DeLo's name is painted under the pilot's window on the Coronado that
is under restoration at the NNAM.
One
of the first paintings I did after joining the Roundtable in the late 1990s was
DeLo delivering Nimitz to Pearl Harbor.
He was a great and enthusiastic help when I asked him about the details
and the Coronado markings, and when I gave him the original he promptly donated
the painting to the NNAM. His
endorsement of my artwork meant the world to me. I remember with great fondness how any discussions we had soon
turned to golf! He didn't think he was
a hero at all, but like all the other veterans he is to me. Blue skies, DeLo.
[ Ed.
note: to see John’s painting of
DeLo’s Coronado on the Nimitz flight, click here. ]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Elliot Carlson
Maryland
author, Joe Rochefort’s War
I had a great conversation with
Captain DeLorenzo on 20 May 2008 at his home in Pensacola. He welcomed me into his family’s home early
in the afternoon and spent the next couple of hours telling me about his
adventure on 24-25 December 1941, when he and four other pilots (the Navy
wasn’t taking any chances) transported Admiral Nimitz to Pearl Harbor. By now much of DeLo’s story is well known:
the trouble the big plane had getting off the water in December weather, the
courtesy shown the pilots by Nimitz who required them to forsake their
Christmas holiday, the appalling sight at Pearl Harbor when they landed.
But what stands out in my mind
from our chat was how gently the captain corrected me when I, like many others,
misidentified his plane as a PBY Catalina (see Potter, Nimitz). It was no such thing; it was a big brother
of the Catalina, a four-engine PB2Y-2 Coronado. Whenever I point this out to
people, I always think of DeLo.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bill Vickrey
North Carolina
I
have known Delo for well over twenty-five years and have a correspondence file
which must weigh five pounds. We exchanged a lot of snail mail correspondence
early on and I kept it all. Here are a
few points of interest. He was a native
of Wisconsin and a graduate of Marquette Law School, in 1939. He joined the Navy in that same year and was
in Class 130-C at Pensacola. Admiral A.
C. Read pinned his “wings of gold” on him in June 1940. He then joined VP-12 based at North Island
in San Diego.
Around
August 1941 he resigned from the Navy to join the AVG [Flying Tigers]. After a few days he was released from the
AVG and the skipper of VP-12 refused to take him back with these comments:
“DeLorenzo, I wouldn’t have you back in my squadron if you were the best damn
pilot in the Navy which, incidentally, you are not.”
He
then joined VP-13 flying the PB2Y Coronado.
His most famous mission in that squadron was flying Admiral Nimitz to
Pearl on December 24-25, 1941 to take over as CINCPAC. In March 1943 he joined VP-102 still flying
the PB2Y. His best memory during this
time was making three bombing runs on Wake while flying from Midway.
He
had many choice billets in his years in the Navy. He had a tour as XO of Kearsage (CV-33) then was CO of Kennebec
(AO-36). Perhaps his plumb assignment
was as CO of the NAS at Corpus Christi, where he was relieved by Joe Auman who
was Clay Fisher’s shipmate in VB-8 at Midway.
My
wife and I were very close to DeLo and Helen and spent some great times with
them. He was a real hustler on the golf
course and managed to “pick my pocket” every time we played.
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In
Remembrance
Although DeLo didn’t participate in the BOM, I’m sure that
no one would deny him at least honorary status among our deceased BOM vet
members whom we’ve memorialized on our Midway Veterans Roster. In fact, he was more of a Midway combat vet
than some of the pretenders who we’ve seen claim that status in recent years,
since he was present on the atoll when it was shelled by a Japanese submarine
in February 1942 (see No Right to Win, p. 11). To that we can add his bombing missions from Midway as noted
above. With the utmost of admiration,
then, I’ve added him to that honored role.
If anyone would like to contribute further memories of DeLo
, like those above, your messages are still welcome and will appear in the next
issue.
Farewell and following seas to a truly outstanding U.S.
Naval officer, friend, family patriarch, and solid supporter of the Battle of
Midway Roundtable. He will be sorely
missed but always remembered. —RR
EDITOR’S NOTES
~ Speaking of senior
members on the Roundtable, happy birthday to our other senior member (in terms
of rank), General Earl Anderson, who turns 92 this month. He was a captain in the Marine detachment on
the Yorktown.
~ To everyone who
attended any of the BOM 69th anniversary events last week, please send in any
photos you can share (or cite a web page where they might be viewed) plus a
description of the proceedings. So far
I’m holding a report only from Mac Showers regarding the event at the NIOS
(ex-Naval Security Group) at Ft. Meade, MD, plus some photos from the Naval
Order banquet in San Francisco.
~ I was gratified to
note that there were a great many BOM commemoration events this year, among
military bases large and small as well as by civilian support organizations in
cities large and small. In the past I
attempted to comment on and list all of them in The Roundtable Forum, but
there were too many this year. That’s
very good news.