This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Tommy Burgdorf (Birddog), FC2
to remember
Carpenter, Charles Lee, MoMM1c.
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Casualty Info
Home Town Wabasha, MN
Last Address RFD 2 Wabasha, MN (Son~ Claude Lee Carpenter c/o Cora Anetta Billings)
Casualty Date Nov 07, 1944
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Pacific Ocean
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial - Honolulu, Hawaii
Wall/Plot Coordinates Courts of the Missing: Court 5 (cenotaph)
Rochambeau was originally built as Marechal Joffre in 1931 by the Societe Provençale de Constructions Navales of La Ciotat, France for the Societe des Services Contractuels des Messageries Maritimes. Manned by Vichy French Forces after the fall of France in 1940, Marechal Joffre was in the Philippines when the United States entered World War II. She was taken over by a crew of downed US Navy fliers from Patrol Wing 10 and with the help of some of the French sailors who were not supportive of the Vichy government sailed on the 18th for Balikpapan, whence she proceeded to Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. She arrived at San Francisco with a cargo of wool and zircon sand on 19 April 1942.
US Navy use
The following day, she was taken over by the United States Maritime Commission and transferred to the Navy. Commissioned 27 April 1942 with Lieutenant Thomas G. Warfield in command, she was renamed Rochambeau and designated AP-63 on the 29th.
Rochambeau, converted for use as a casualty evacuation ship, departed Oakland, California on 20 October for her first operation, under the U.S. flag. With replacements and reinforcements for the Guadalcanal campaign embarked on her westward passage, she made Nouméa; disembarked her passengers; replaced them with casualties from hospitals there, at Suva, and at Bora Bora; and returned to San Francisco on 3 December. At the end of December, she sailed west again. Extending her range to New Zealand and Australia on that voyage, she limited her next run, 9 to 27 March, to New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. On that trip she carried Lieutenant (j.g.) John F. Kennedy to Espiritu Santo where he was transferred to LST-449 and taken to the Solomons. During May, Rochambeauremained in waters off California, then, on 5 June, resumed her passenger/casualty runs to the south and southwest Pacific. Continuing those runs well into 1944, she added ports in New Guinea to her stops in September 1943 and the central Solomons in the spring of 1944. On her last run, 16 November 1944 – 17 January 1945 she brought back casualties from hospitals on Eniwetok, Guam, and Kwajalein in the company of the USS Barrow and USS Boyd.
