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Casualty Info
Home Town Mundale, NY
Last Address New Florence, PA
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)
Military Service Number 101 797
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Ensign Harvey McClung was Killed in Action on December 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was stationed aboard the USS Arizona BB39.
Service number: 101797
Comments/Citation:
Harvey Manford McClung enlisted in the U. S. Navy in September 1940, three months after the death of his father, a retired Presbyterian minister. Harvey was born on February 17, 1918, in Hamden, New York. He graduated from New Florence High School in Pennsylvania. His father served in the Spanish-American Was as a private in the 6th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
Harvey McClung had been living with his parents, Nathan and Anna, in New Florence, Pennsylvania. He had a degree from Geneva college, a Christian school in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, but like so many people during the Depression, had trouble finding work. The April 1940 Census states he had been unemployed for 43 weeks.
Harvey McClung earned an ensign’s commission in the Naval Reserve in June 1941 after attending accelerated midshipmen training at Northwestern University. Ensign (ENS) Harvey McClung, Service # O-101797, was assigned to the battleship USS Arizona where he was an assistant communications officer on the flagship staff of Rear Admiral Isaac “Cap” Kidd, commander of Battleship Division 1.
ENS McClung was aboard the USS Arizona on December 7, 1941, when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. ENS McClung’s battle station was Flag Radar Plot on the third deck of the superstructure. The ensign was thus just behind the top of the conning tower and the No. 2 turret where the forward magazines exploded, destroying 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 8:00 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 an 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 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.
ENS Harvey Manford McClung is listed as Missing in Action or Buried at Sea. He is listed on the “Courts of the Missing” at the Honolulu Memorial and remembered at the USS Arizona Memorial; both are in Honolulu, Honolulu County, Hawaii. He was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This information was researched and written on behalf of the USS Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.
SOURCES:
New Castle News of New Castle, Pennsylvania
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Census Records
Death Certificate
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania World War II Veterans’ Compensation Bureau
Photograph provided by the U. S. Navy
https://pearlharbor.org/facts-uss-arizona-bb-39/
http://www.ibiblio.org/phha/arizona/history.html#pearlharbor
World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Attack on Pearl Harbor
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1941
Description The attack on Pearl Harbor, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the Hawaii Operation or Operation AI by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and Operation Z during planning, was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II.
Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan planned in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Over the next seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
The attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time. The base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese fighter planes, bombers, and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service and went on to fight in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. Important base installations such as the power station, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section) were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 64 servicemen killed. One Japanese sailor, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured.
The attack came as a profound shock to the American people and led directly to the American entry into World War II in both the Pacific and European theaters. The following day, December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. Domestic support for non-interventionism, which had been fading since the Fall of France in 1940,[19] disappeared. Clandestine support of the United Kingdom (e.g., the Neutrality Patrol) was replaced by active alliance. Subsequent operations by the U.S. prompted Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to declare war on the U.S. on December 11, which was reciprocated by the U.S. the same day.
From the 1950s, several writers alleged that parties high in the U.S. and British governments knew of the attack in advance and may have let it happen (or even encouraged it) with the aim of bringing the U.S. into war. However, this advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is rejected by mainstream historians.
There were numerous historical precedents for unannounced military action by Japan. However, the lack of any formal warning, particularly while negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy". Because the attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, the attack on Pearl Harbor was judged by the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime.
