Pacific Ship and Shore

Civil Aviation Medicine in the Bureaucracy

by Heber A. Hollbrook

Published by Holbrook’s Banner Publishing Company, Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, in 1974, this is the history of the growth of federal aviation medicine in the United States since Congress passed the first Civil Aeronautics Act in 1926.

Recorded are the doctors, managers, and aviation executives in both government and in industry who helped shape the course of aviation medicine and the national aviation system over the past half century. Included is the history of the airline pilot fatigue and flight-time limitation controversies of the 1930’s, the protracted argument over physical cal standards for private, commercial, and airline transport pilots; the politics of federal aviation medical examiner appointments of doctors; and the role of aviation medical specialists in the deterrence of air piracy in the 1960s and 1970s. The book reflects a creditable and workable account of the aviation bureaucracy and the aviation industry through the early 1970s, valued as an historical reference by the Airline Pilots Association and others with an interest in flying and aviation safety.

U.S.S. Houston - The Last Flagship of the Asiatic Fleet

by Heber A. Hollbrook

The U.S.S. HOUSTON (CA-30) was the first United States Cruiser sunk in combat in World War II. A ―Treaty Class‖ heavy cruiser that carried only light armor plating to protect her turrets and vitals, she was lost in a violent surface battle on March 1, 1942 against better protected and armed Japanese cruisers and destroyers during the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies.

Of the 1,084 officers and crew, lost were 720 of them, including her commanding officer, Captain Albert H. Rooks, who at the time of his death had been the senior remaining member of the United States Navy on duty in the Far East, the two senior U.S. Flag Officers having departed the area, the U.S. Asiatic Fleet having been disbanded some days before, leaving the HOUSTON and four U.S. Destroyers as units for reinforcement of the Dutch naval commander’s warships for the last futile attempts to save the Dutch East Indies from the invading forces of Japan.

To those deaths aboard the HOUSTON must be added 48 others who died three weeks earlier when a Japanese bomb struck one of her main turrets. At that point in World War II her direct combat deaths were only exceeded in numbers by the loss of those killed aboard the battleship ARIZONA at Pearl Harbor. Also after the war the country would learn that of the 364 survivors of HOUSTON’s sinking who were taken prisoners by the Japanese another 76 had died in the prison camps.

The History of the USS San Francisco in World War II

by Heber A. Hollbrook

This is the historical account — the history — of the only ship of the United States Navy to have four men each receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for their valor in one battle —the Night Naval Battle of Guadalcanal — in which two of them lost their lives, along with 105 others.

In that same battle 32 others were awarded the Navy Cross, and another 21 others the Silver Star, to make the USS SAN FRANCISCO Officers and Crewmen the most decorated ever for one ship in one battle in the Navy’s history.