GuySittingintheStands
Senior Member
According to the website ancestry.com, 20 percent of boys are given the first and middle names of a family member (father?). That's 1 in 5, as an upper limit. If this held true a century ago, when theoretically most US Navy WW2 pilots were born, then we could use the 1/5 figure to calculate the number of US Navy pilots named James, jr. who were killed in combat in the Pacific.
https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/american-baby-names-are-all-in-the-family/#:~:text=Of those, approximately one-third,named after a family member.
(or calculated slightly differently, since the 5 James, jr's were not counted in the initial survey of fallen Navy aviation officers in WW2 in the Pacific -- (28 +5)/ 5 = 6 or 7 .)
So, I'm predicting, if one went through the US Navy history website again, and, using the Ctrl F function, searched through all the "James" hits matching our criteria to include those hits where the son was named after the father (James, jr, hits), one would come up with at most 6 or 7 James _______, jr's who met our criteria out of the 10s of thousands of US Navy WW2 dead. That's at most 6 or 7 aircraft carriers, maybe only 1- 3 if we were lucky. I wonder how many Jack Larsens served as pilots on those carriers?
Next up: Ctrl F James, jr . see how far it gets us going through the US Navy history website letter by letter.
https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/american-baby-names-are-all-in-the-family/#:~:text=Of those, approximately one-third,named after a family member.
- In fact, 20 percent of men were given both their first and middle names after a family member.
(or calculated slightly differently, since the 5 James, jr's were not counted in the initial survey of fallen Navy aviation officers in WW2 in the Pacific -- (28 +5)/ 5 = 6 or 7 .)
So, I'm predicting, if one went through the US Navy history website again, and, using the Ctrl F function, searched through all the "James" hits matching our criteria to include those hits where the son was named after the father (James, jr, hits), one would come up with at most 6 or 7 James _______, jr's who met our criteria out of the 10s of thousands of US Navy WW2 dead. That's at most 6 or 7 aircraft carriers, maybe only 1- 3 if we were lucky. I wonder how many Jack Larsens served as pilots on those carriers?
Next up: Ctrl F James, jr . see how far it gets us going through the US Navy history website letter by letter.
Last edited: