North High School Wall of Honor
Joseph William Naab, Jr.
Class of June, 1930
Research done by Claradell Shedd, Class of 1953.
Joseph William Naab, Jr.

Joseph graduated in the June, 1930 North High class. He enlisted in the US Coast Guard on September 20, 1937 in Des Moines, IA. His service number was 1574. Joseph's next of kin was listed as Mrs. Anna G. Naab, 1018 Callanan Courts, Des Moines, IA.

Joseph William Naab, Jr.
Year   Rank   Status
June, 1930   Graduated   Graduated from North High School, Des Moines, IA. ived at 1018 Callanan Courts in Des Moines, IA
1930-1932 x x University of Iowa
September, 1933-September, 1937 x US Coast Guard x Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT. Graduated first in his class in 1937 (picture)
September 20, 1937 x US Coast Guard/
Ensign
x Enlisted in Coast Guard in Des Moines, IA. Appointment as Ensign
1937 x Family x Married Elizabeth Stromberg
1937 x Training x USCGC Eagle (WIX-327)
1938 x US Coast Guard x First tour was aboard the USCGC Alexander Hamilton (WPG-34) on Bering Sea Patrol in Alaska
1940 x US Coast Guard/
Ensign
x 1940 Census shows domicile as Boston, MA on USG Cayuga as Ensign
date x US Coast Guard x Service in California, Connecticut, Michigan, Maine, Washington, D.C. Maryland, Massachusetts/Antartica, and Washington State. During WWII, assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic on the USCGC Ingham.
date x US Coast Guard x USCGC Mackinaw (WAG-83)
October, 1942-
October, 1944
x x Master's Degree in Engineering from MIT while taking a break from North Atlantic patrols during WWII
date x US Coast Guard x Experiences on commissioning details: Engineer Officer of the CGC Winnebago, instructor at the Coast Guard Academy, Commanding Officer of the USCGC Yakutat, and stretch at the Coast Guard Yard, and you have to answer to why the Eastwind "Knows no barrier."
1952 x US Coast Guard x Aboard the USCGC Yakutat out of Portland, ME. Rescued four seamen from the bow of a tanker which had broken in half. Twenty minutes after the last man had been saved, the section sank.
February 1, 1959 x US Coast Guard/
Captain
x Promoted to Captain
1960+ x US Coast Guard x USCGC Eastwind to include Christmas in Antarctica.
March 21, 1961 x US Coast Guard x Operation Deepfreeze completed.
April 10, 1961 x US Coast Guard x To Columbo, Ceylon. Eastwind was first ship to take part in the International Indian Ocean Survey. (1962-1964). Operation Monsoon.
November 5, 1961 x US Coast Guard x Mock Mutiny on way to McMurdo Sound, Antarctica (picture and text)
1962-63 x US Coast Guard x Rome; St Peter's Basilicia (picture)
September 2, 1964 x US Coast Guard/
Captain
x Physical disability. Discharged in13th Coast Guard District, Seattle, WA
1973 x x Taught physics and mathematics at Mitchell Junior College in New London, CT until retirement in 1973
December 12, 1980
x Civilian x Deceased in Brunswick, Maine.
aft December 12, 1980 x Buried x Arlington National Cemetery; Arlington, VA

USCGC Eagle (WIX-327); Three-masted sailing Barque
USCGC Eagle (WIX-327 (formerly Horst Wessel) is a 295-foot (90 m) barque used as a training cutter for future officers of the United States Coast Guard. She is the only active commissioned sailing vessel in American military service, and one of only two commissioned sailing vessels, along with USS Constitution. She is the seventh Coast Guard cutter to bear the name in a line dating back to 1792, including the Revenue Cutter Eagle, which famously fought the British man-of-war Dispatch during the War of 1812.


Each summer, Eagle deploys with cadets from the United States Coast Guard Academy and candidates from the Officer Candidate School for periods ranging from a week to two months. These voyages fulfill multiple roles. The primary mission is training the cadets and officer candidates, but the ship also performs a public relations role for the Coast Guard and the United States. Often, Eagle makes calls at foreign ports as a goodwill ambassador.

The ship was built as the German sail training ship Horst Wessel in 1936; it served to train German sailors in sail techniques until decommissioned at the start of World War II. The vessel was given anti-aircraft armament and re-commissioned in 1942. At the end of the war, Horst Wessel was taken by the U.S. as war reparations.

USCGC Alexander Hamilton (SPG-34)
USCGC Alexander Hamilton (WPG-34) was a Treasury-class United States Coast Guard Cutter. She was named after the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who was mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr. Sunk after an attack by a German U-boat in January 1942, the Hamilton was the U.S. Coast Guard's first loss of World War II. On January 29, 1942, the Hamilton was torpedoed on the starboard side by the German submarine U-132, which had been patrolling the Icelandic coast near Reykjavík. The explosion killed twenty men instantly and the total death toll was 26. After she capsized on January 30, salvage attempts were abandoned and the American destroyer USS Ericsson fired upon the wreck three times to send her to the bottom of the sea, 28 miles (45 km) from the coast.


USCGC Ingham (WHEC-35)
USCGC Ingham (WHEC-35) is one of only two preserved Treasury-class United States Coast Guard Cutters. Originally Samuel D. Ingham, she was the fourth cutter to be named for Treasury Secretary Samuel D. Ingham. She was the most decorated vessel in the Coast Guard fleet and was the only cutter to ever be awarded two Presidential Unit Citations.

Ingham served with distinction during World War II on convoy duty. Protecting ships ferrying vital supplies to Britain, Ingham battled stormy weather, German U-boats, and enemy aircraft. On 15 December 1942, during one crossing, Ingham engaged and sank the enemy submarine U-626.[3] After 1944, Ingham served as an amphibious flagship and she would later take part in three campaigns in the Pacific Theater. Ingham was the last active warship in the US fleet with a U-Boat kill.

USCGC Mackinaw (WAGB-83)
USCGC Mackinaw (WAGB-83) is a 290-foot (88 m) vessel specifically designed for ice breaking duties on the Great Lakes. LR number: 6119534.


Mackinaw was homeported in Cheboygan, Michigan during active service. Due to Mackinaw's age and expensive upkeep, the cutter was decommissioned and replaced with a smaller multipurpose cutter USCGC Mackinaw (WLBB-30), which was commissioned in Cheboygan the same day.

In 2002 the crew of this cutter painted and refurbished the Fourteen Foot Shoal Light.

The old Mackinaw moved under its own power on 21 June 2006 from the port of its decommissioning to a permanent berth at the SS Chief Wawatam dock at the ship's namesake port, Mackinaw City, Michigan where she now serves as a museum ship known as Icebreaker Mackinaw Maritime Museum.

USCGC Yakutat (WAVP-380)
USCGC Yakutat (WAVP-380) was a United States Navy Barnegat-class small seaplane tender in commission from 1944 to 1946. Yakutat tended seaplanes in combat areas in the Pacific during the latter stages of World War II. After the war, she was in commission in the United States Coast Guard from 1948 to 1971 as the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Yakutat (WAVP-380), later WHEC-380, seeing service in the Vietnam War during her Coast Guard career. Transferred to South Vietnam in 1971, she was commissioned into the Republic of Vietnam Navy as the frigate RVNS Tr?n Nh?t Du?t (HQ-03). When South Vietnam collapsed in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War, she fled to the Philippines, where the Philippine Navy took custody of her and cannibalized her for spare parts until discarding her in 1982.

Log of Operations on USCGC Eastwind (WAGB-279)
USCGC Eastwind (WAGB-279)
(more pictures)
The Coast Guard Cutter Eastwind was commissioned in San Pedro, CA on June 3, 1944. The 269-foot icebreaker, destined for nearly 20 Polar expeditions, completed her shakedown cruise on July 14, 1944. A month later, she reached her home port of Boston, MA.

Her first mission in WWII was to Northeast Greenland. There she fought through 10-foot thick ice to rescue two men in a small boat, lost from an allied patrol. Purshing still further northweard, she sighted a German weather station on October 1, 1944. During the next 15 days, landing parties from the Eastwind captured the station, its valuable documents, and a German expeditionary vessel. The rest of the war was spent working in thick polar ice and ferreting out various enemy infiltrations. At the war's end, the icebreaker made four peacetime trips to Greenland. In 1948, she smashed a shipping path in New York's icebound Hudson River, alleviating serious supply shortages in upstate communities.

From 1950-1954, the cutter made numerous and varied trips to the northern and Arctic regions. Then in 1955, participation in the first Operation Deepfreeze. Since then, she has divided her time between Arctic and Antarctic operations.

On November 3, 1960, the Cost Guard Icebreaker Eastwind prepared to chase the setting sun across the Pacific after transiting the Panama Canal enroute to Antarctica to participate in Operation Deepfreeze 61 (March 22, 1961). The next port of all for the glistening white 269-foot cutter would be Christchurch, New Zealand, jumping off spots for the icy wastes of McMurdo sound. A search for a downed jet pilot, the saving of a life at sea, and a midnight buzzing by a plane thought at first to have been a Cuban bomber, highlighted the Eastwind's voyage to Panama. Two days out of Boston, the ship, which carries two helicopters, was directed to assume on-scene command of a search force consisting of 12 aircraft and 4 other ships in an attempt to locate a downed Air Force F-84 jet pilot, lost on a flight from Bermuda. The search was called off after it was ascertained that the pilot probably had not been able to bail out. The following morning the Eastwind received a radio message that a Merchant Seaman on the Norweigian Tanker Borge was in serious condition with bleeding ulcers. A rendezvous was made and, despite a vicious swell, a small boat with Ensign William B. Hewitt of Needham Heights, MA, was lowered and eight oarsmen stroked for the Borge. In the boat was the Eastwind's cotor, SAS Lt. David R. Herr of New Providence, PA. After emergency medical treatment was rendered, the Borge headed for the nearest port, and the boat returned to the Eastwind. Forty-seven tense minutes passed before it could be hoisted abord due to the rough condition of the sea.

The Eastwind's skipper, Captain Joseph W. Naab, Jr. of Freeport, ME congratulated the men on the job well done. "You have performed this operation with great skill and courage, and in the finest tradition of the sea" he said. The Eastwind then resumed her course for the Carribean, where she was to pass within four and a half miles of the east coast of Cuba. It was midnight, off of Cuba, when an unidentified aircraft was picked upon the radar. Flying without lights of any kind, it made a low pass over the sip and awakened many crew members slpping in the cool air topside. "Here comes a Castro" one of the men shouted. There was stillness for a moment as the presumed Cuban bomber thundered in for another low run at almost mast height. Then it flashed a recognition light and laughter sounded around the decks. It was only a US P2V Aircraft on routine patrol.

The Eastwind docked briefly at Rodman Naval Base in the Canal Zone to take on mail, supplies, and fresh water, and several crew members jokingly talked of going ashore to buy air conditioners. "That's one of the problems of an icebreaker" explained Captain Naab. "We're insulated for cold, but we spend about a month in tropical weather getting there. It gets might hot."

High spot of the three-week voyage across the Pacific was to occur when the ship crossed the Equator and those who had never been across before would get initiated. Then a week in Christchurch, New Zealand, preparing for the big push to Antarctica, where the massive icebreaker was scheduled to smash a path for shipping supplying scientific stations there.

From another source:
Eastwind made history when she became the first cutter to ever circumnavigate the globe in 1960-61. She departed Boston on 25 October 1960, transited the Panama Canal, crossed the Pacific Ocean, visited New Zealand and then participated in Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica. She sailed home via the Indian Ocean, Suez Canal, the Mediterranean Sea, through the Straits of Gibraltar, and arrived back at Boston in May, 1961.
From September 1961 to March 1962 Eastwind participated in Operation Deep Freeze to the Antarctic. From November 1963 to March 1964 Eastwind participated in Operation Deep Freeze to the Antarctic. From November 1964 to April 1965 Eastwind participated in Operation Deep Freeze to the Antarctic. From June to August 1965 Eastwind re-supplied Arctic bases. From November 1965to April 1966 Eastwind participated in Operation Deep Freeze to the Antarctic. In March 1966 the ship's helicopter detached to aid in flood relief in Argentina. On 7 February 1967 Eastwind rescued the Danish Antarctic supply ships Nella Dan and Thala Dan from heavy ice 40 miles off Budd Coast of Antarctica. Nella Dan had been trapped for one month and Thala Dan for two weeks.
USCGC Eagle (WIX-327) patch US Coast Guard Cutter (WIX-327) 1936: Cadet Joseph William Naab, Jr.
US Coast Guard Cutter (WIX-327)
USCGC Alexander Hamilton (WPG-34)
USCGC Alexander Hamilton (WPG-34).
Naab served on this vessel in the Bering Sea in Alaska.
USCGC Ingham (WHEC-35)
USCGC Mackinaw (WAG-83)
USCGC Mackinaw (WAG-83); Icebreaker on the Great Lakes
USCGC Yakutat (AVP-32; 1944-1948; WAVP-380; 1948-1966)
USCGC Yakutat (WAVP-380) Awards, Citations and Campaign Ribbons
Precedence of awards is from top to bottom, left to right
Top Row: Navy Unit Commendation
Second Row: Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation - American Campaign Medal - Asiatic-Pacific Campaign (4)
Third Row: World War II Victory Medal - Navy Occupation Service Medal (with Asia clasp) - National Defense Service Medal
Fourth Row: Vietnam Service Medal (4) - Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation (4) - Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal
USS Eastwind (WAGB-279)


Captain of the Eastwind: Joseph William Naab, Jr.
1963-64: USCGC Eastwind (WAGB-279) entering Boston Harbor



Thanksgiving 1960: USCGC Eastwind/Crossed International Dateline



1932: Joseph Naab, Sr. and Joseph Naab, Jr. in CA   1961: Captain on the bridge of the Eastwind
align="center"
Arlington National Cemetery; Plot: Columarium No 1; Memorial #34239965
Joseph William Naab, Jr.
Captain
United States Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard Academy Patch

US Coast Guard Seal

CINCLANTFLT patch

1947: Lt. Cmdr. Joseph William Naab, Jr.

Coast Guard Captain insignia



US Coast Guard Captain

American Defense w/clasp, National Defense, Antarctic Service, European-Aflrican-Middle Eastern Campaign, WWII Victory   Rifle expertPistol expert

American Defense with clasp, National Defense Service Medal, Antarctic Service
Europen-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, WWII Victory Medal,
Commendation CINCLANTFLT, Expert Pistol and Rifleman
References
(1) Information was obtained from the Records on Military Personnel Who Died, were Missing in Action, or Prisoners of War as a result of the Vietnam War. This document can be found online at the National Archives and Records Administration at http://www.archives.gov/.

(2) The comprehensive list of names from North High's 1893-2018 graduation classes are from Claradell Shedd's North Des Moines High School website. The names of North High School graduates can be found online at: http://www.ndmhs.com/. Joseph William Naab, Jr.'s 1930 class page is: http://ndmhs.com/pages/yearclass1930.html.
1936: Joseph William Naab, Jr. at USCG Academy
10/27/10: Died 12/12/80.
Music: "Semper Paratus" (Always Ready), the US Coast Guard Song
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