This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Nicole Summers, MMFN
to remember
Ballman, August Frederick, Jr., ENS.
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Casualty Info
Home Town Hoboken, NJ
Last Address Mystic, CT
Casualty Date Oct 12, 1943
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Atlantic Ocean
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment East Coast Memorial (Tablets of the missing) - Manhattan, New York
Wall/Plot Coordinates (cenotaph)
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Commissioned into service in the summer of 1943, USS Dorado conducted shakedown and training operations off the New England region of northeastern United States. On 6 Oct 1943, she departed for the Panama Canal Zone for the ultimate destination of Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii. On 12 Oct 1943, a US Navy PBM Mariner aircraft operating out of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba detected an unidentified submarine and attacked her with three depth charges and one bomb; it was not clear whether the submarine was damaged; later in the patrol, the same aircraft encountered another submarine which fired on the aircraft. Later, an Allied convoy sailing through the region reported no contact with any friendly submarines. After Dorado had failed to arrive at the Panama Canal Zone on 14 Oct, air searches were launched, finding scattered oil slicks that later investigation found to be not of submarine fuel in nature. It was ultimately concluded that both of the submarine contacts that the US Navy PBM Mariner aircraft encountered on 12 Oct 1943 were indeed hostile (the second contact was later concluded to be German submarine U-214), and thus USS Dorado was most likely lost due to an accident or to a German naval mine.
ENS Ballman was among the crew listed as missing in action and later declared dead.
Comments/Citation:
Service numbers:
Enlisted - 2232034
Officer - 201779
Description The plan of the Pacific subseries was determined by the geography, strategy, and the military organization of a theater largely oceanic. Two independent, coordinate commands, one in the Southwest Pacific under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and the other in the Central, South, and North Pacific (Pacific Ocean Areas) under Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, were created early in the war. Except in the South and Southwest Pacific, each conducted its own operations with its own ground, air, and naval forces in widely separated areas. These operations required at first only a relatively small number of troops whose efforts often yielded strategic gains which cannot be measured by the size of the forces involved. Indeed, the nature of the objectivesùsmall islands, coral atolls, and jungle-bound harbors and airstrips, made the employment of large ground forces impossible and highlighted the importance of air and naval operations. Thus, until 1945, the war in the Pacific progressed by a double series of amphibious operations each of which fitted into a strategic pattern developed in Washington.
