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Rodney Galles (Rod), CTIC
to remember
Galles, Sylvester Lewis, EM1.
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Casualty Info
Home Town Alton, IA
Last Address Route 2 Benton, IL
Casualty Date Mar 19, 1945
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Pacific Ocean
Conflict World War II
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Before dawn on 19 March 1945, USS Franklin (CV-13), which had maneuvered to within 50 miles of the Japanese mainland, closer than any other U.S. carrier during the war, launched a fighter sweep against Honshū and later a strike against shipping in KobeHarbor. Suddenly, a single aircraft – possibly a Yokosuka D4Y "Judy" dive bomber, though other accounts suggest an Aichi D3A "Val", also a dive bomber – pierced the cloud cover and made a low level run on the ship to drop two semi-armor-piercing bombs. One bomb struck the flight deck centerline, penetrating to the hangar deck, causing destruction and igniting fires through the second and third decks, and knocking out the CombatInformationCenter and air plot. The second hit aft, tearing through two decks. Franklin was dead in the water, without radio communications, and broiling in the heat from enveloping fires. Many of the crew were blown overboard, driven off by fire, killed or wounded, but the hundreds of officers and enlisted who voluntarily remained saved their ship.
EM1 Galles was among the men listed as missing in action and later declared dead.
World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Okinawa Gunto Operation
From Month/Year
March / 1945
To Month/Year
June / 1945
Description The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg. was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan, and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi (550 km) away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland (coded Operation Downfall). Four divisions of the U.S. 10th Army (the 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th) and two Marine Divisions (the 1st and 6th) fought on the island. Their invasion was supported by naval, amphibious, and tactical air forces.
The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of kamikaze attacks from the Japanese defenders, and to the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle resulted in the highest number of casualties in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Based on Okinawan government sources, mainland Japan lost 77,166 soldiers, who were either killed or committed suicide, and the Allies suffered 14,009 deaths (with an estimated total of more than 65,000 casualties of all kinds). Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria caused Japan to surrender less than two months after the end of the fighting on Okinawa.