Their keys may have fallen silent,
 but their memory lives on.

The Registry of Radio Operators Lost at Sea

--an innovative electronic memorial

The Veteran Wireless Operators Association has long maintained the impressive monument dedicated to radio operators who have lost their lives while maintaining their post at sea.  This monument stands in Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan.  In addition to this physical monument, the VWOA also maintains an electronic monument to honor "sparks" who have made the supreme sacrifice.

The Battery Park monument lists the names of all known sparks who lost their lives during peacetime from 1909 until the present day.  With this electronic registry,  we begin to recognize the courage and the sacrifice of shipboard radio officers who lost their lives during wartime as well.  For the first time, operators who lost their lives in the convoys, in the air, and beneath the oceans can all be recognized and, most importantly, remembered.

This electronic monument consists of a Registry of Radio Operators Lost at Sea in the form of a large (nearly 30 megabyte) PDF file.  The PDF format allows you to print out pages of interest on your own printer.  It also supports a powerful search capability by which you can search the entire registry for individual or vessel names.  To access the search capability, first open the PDF file (either on-line or after saving a copy to your local computer firs). Once the file is open within your Acrobat PDF reader, "Control F" brings up the form into which you can enter your search terms.

Despite the seeming simplicity of the PDF pages, they are actually "windows" into a powerful database structure offering the ability to search by vessel name, operator name, dates or ranges of dates, and much, much more.

There are two links to this registry and an introduction to the project.

Click on the picture below to download a concise overview of the project (in PDF format should you wish to print it out), including its history and mission.  Note that this is a large file (over 5 megabytes) so it make take a while to load.  Also note that you might have to temporarily override your browser's security settings might in order to download the file.

Click on the link below  to access the actual Registry of Radio Operators Lost at Sea.  If you wish, you can use the "save target" feature of your browser to save a copy of the registry on our own computer.   Remember that you might have to temporarily override your browser's security settings in order to download the file.

Click on the picture below for the Registry of Radio Operators Lost at Sea