Surplus Rifle Forum - www.surplusrifleforum.com

Looking into some trash bins and I found a 1934-1940 Navy Photo album that belonged to Seaman First Class, Herrbert E. Rodenkirch who is buried at our Woods Veterans Cemetery at the VA center in Milwaukee, WI. He was in recruit platoon 34-16 at San Diego NTS he was born 24 Jan 1912 and died 20 May 1976. Why someone would throw it out is beyond me
The photo album covers most of his time in the US Navy. He has a lot of pictures of the dry dock and the wreck of the USS Sicard DD 346 and the Lea DD 118.
The 2 ships collided on 12 May 1935 and were repaired at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard between June & July of 1935. The sailor must have been on the Sicard DD 346 because there are lots of pictures of the repaired ship and his time on the ship. The early pictures of his boot camp are dated 20 July 1934. The album is about 2 inches thick and remains mostly intact. On average there are approximately 8 -10 photos per page and 23 pages in the album. Each page is double sided with the pictures held on by gold paper, sticky corners like seen in the old family 1940s photo albums. The photos are not glued down to the paper. They can be removed. I figure there are approximately a little more than 400 photos. A nice historical find and I also recovered a scrap book of news paper clippings from 1941. Nothing about Dec 7th. Its like reading a paper about the winds of war back in 1941.
So for free this was a nice historical save.

More pictures of the album.

And some more...

Some more sea planes...

Ship references:
Sicard DD 346

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sicard_(DD-346)

https://www.theworldunhinged.com/shop/m ... hotograph/

Lea DD 118

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lea_(DD-118)

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/we ... DD118.html


Anyone know where Navy Fleet Air Base 4 was located around 1935-1940??? That is the ID on one of the planes.
The big airship may be the ZR3 Los Angeles in use from 1921 - 1939.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Los_Angeles_(ZR-3)

72 usmc wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 14, 2019 6:51 pm

Why someone would throw it out is beyond me

why? some families' don't give a rat's tail about some family members, all they're concerned about is clearing out his "junk" in the trash and selling the house to reap the money. that's why

That is so cool! You know, when you are done with it, I wonder what would be a good museum or such to donate it to, so people can continue to learn from it and enjoy it. Nice find!

Cool, Thanks for posting.

Ghoulardi wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 14, 2019 8:11 pm

72 usmc wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 14, 2019 6:51 pm

Why someone would throw it out is beyond me

why? some families' don't give a rat's tail about some family members, all they're concerned about is clearing out his "junk" in the trash and selling the house to reap the money. that's why

Its the sign of the times, you would think at least donate it to the local museum to preserve the photos.
Thats American history and they are not published photos. Once they are lost they are gone forever.

another possibility is, he lived alone had no family, when he died the landlord, relator etc,,, threw all his stuff out getting it cleaned up for the new owner/tenants

You think thats bad , visit your coroners office and look in the trash bin , same situation x 20 , a shameful event no matter where , i would like to thank to man bun coffee drinking hybrid drivers for that new mentality I see that could care less for the americans who put forth the effort to save there coffee drinkin man bun leather pants cell phone in there ear whineing there feelings are hurt cause I fly the AMERICAN flag every damn day of the year , sorry for the rant. I just want to punch these clowns in the mouth some days.

Great pictures, glad you were able to save them

How did you find them out of curiosity?

See first post : "Looking into some trash bins and I found a 1934-1940 Navy Photo album that belonged to Seaman First Class, Herrbert E. Rodenkirch who is buried at our Woods Veterans Cemetery at the VA center in Milwaukee, WI. He was in recruit platoon 34-16 at San Diego NTS he was born 24 Jan 1912 and died 20 May 1976. Why someone would throw it out is beyond me "
Trash dumpster for cleaning up a house, it always worth a look into when out for your walk.

Was it in front of a house being remodeled or just open trash cans? I look sometimes when I’m walking certain areas but most times just keep on walking