Francis P. Hammerberg
United States Navy Medal of Honor recipient (1920–1945)
Owen Francis Patrick Hammerberg (May 31, 1920 – February 17, 1945) was a United States Navy diver who received the Medal of Honor posthumously for rescuing two fellow divers.
Biography
Hammerberg was born at Daggett, Michigan, on May 31, 1920; his family subsequently moved to Flint when he was young.
He enlisted in the United States Navy June 16, 1941 and subsequently served on battleship USS Idaho (BB-42) and mine sweeper USS Advent (AM-83). Later that year, he underwent instruction at the Deep Sea Diving School, Washington, D.C., and was assigned duty with the Mobile Diving Salvage Unit under Service Force, Pacific Fleet.
During salvage in the aftermath of the West Loch Disaster, he lost his life in a rescue operation at Pearl Harbor on February 17, 1945. Disregarding all personal danger, he rescued one diver who had been trapped in a cave-in of steel wreckage while tunneling under a sunken LST. After this rescue, Hammerberg went even farther under the buried hulk and, while rescuing a second diver, was pinned down by another cave-in and perished. Boatswain's Mate Hammerberg posthumously received the Medal of Honor; he is the last person to be awarded the medal for non-combat heroism.
He was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Southfield, Michigan.
Namesake
In 1955, the destroyer escort USS Hammerberg (DE-1015) was named for him. A street in Flint and a playing field in Detroit are also named Hammerberg in his honor.
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This entry incorporates text from “Francis P. Hammerberg” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.