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Casualty Info
Home Town Increase, MS
Last Address Wilmington, CA
Casualty Date Dec 07, 1941
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Hawaii
Conflict World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Attack on Pearl Harbor
Location of Interment USS Arizona Memorial - Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Wall/Plot Coordinates (cenotaph)
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Chief Petty Officer (Metalsmith) Richard Molpus was Killed in Action on December 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was stationed aboard the USS Arizona BB39.
Comments/Citation:
MOLPUS, Richard Preston (CMSMTHP) Service Number: 2766349
Richard P. Molpus was a “lifer.” This was navy term for sailors planning to make the Navy their lifelong career. He joined the navy in 1919. Molpus was a Chief Metalsmith and Machinist Mate. By 1941 he had enough hash marks on his sleeve to require counting them and multiplying by four to come up with his years of service.
Molpus was born August 14, 1902 in Ventura, California. This coastal city would eventually draw him to a life at sea. He married Bertha Francis and they made their home in Wilmington, California. Before being assigned to the Battleship Arizona in 1933, he had served on the USS Pennsylvania.
His duties as a Metalsmith were much like the blacksmith in western towns. He was a craftsman who fashioned metal shapes into parts. He repaired the three amphibious spotter planes on the Arizona, performed riveting, drilling, welding, brazing and calking for all the metal structures on the ship.
At the onset of the December 7, 1941 attack, the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) was moored at berth Fox 7 on “Battleship Row.” The repair ship Vestal (AR-4) was on the port side; and the starboard side faced the northeastern shore of Ford Island.
Just before 8 am, the ship’s air raid alarm sounded and the crew was ordered to general quarters. During the attack the battleship was struck by as many as eight aerial bombs, including one 1,700 lb. armor-piercing shell which penetrated the deck near the Number 2 turret and detonated in the smokeless powder magazine, causing a “cataclysmic” explosion “which destroyed the ship forward” and ignited a fire which burned for two days.
Most of the Arizona crewmen who perished in the attack, which included Molpus, died instantly during the explosion. The ship quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor along with 1,177 of the 1,512 personnel on board, representing about half the total number of Americans killed that day.
CMS Molpus’ sacrifice is memorialized in several locations. He is interred on the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii and his name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific also located in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Sources: Ancestry.com, Folds3.com, Find A Grave, POW/MIA Acctg.Agency, Naval-History.net
Pennsylvania Class Battleship: Displacement 31,400 Tons, Dimensions, 608' 6" (oa) x 97' 1" x 29' 10" (Max). Armament 12 x 14"/45 14 x 5"/51, 4 x 3"/50 2 x 21" tt. Armor, 13 1/2" Belt, 18" Turrets, 3" +2" Decks, 16" Conning Tower. Machinery, 34,000 SHP; Geared Turbines, 4 screws. Speed, 21 Knots, Crew 915.
Operational and Building Data: Laid down by New York Naval Ship Yard, March 16, 1914. Launched June 19, 1915. Commissioned October 17, 1916. Decommissioned (War Loss). Stricken December 1, 1942.
Fate: Sunk by Japanese aircraft during attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7 1941. Arizona still rests in the berth where she sank. A Memorial to her crew was built over the wreck in 1962. 1,177 Officers and Men were lost with the ship and remain on duty inside her rusting hulk. The wreck is still bleeding fuel oil, more than 70 years after her sinking.
