Bangust Odyssey Page



    On the day the U S S Bangust first moved under its own power - 17/11/43 - the ships navigator began to plot the ships daily local noontime position on a Pacific Ocean Plotting Chart. The chart is 4 feet X 6 feet and was mounted on the wardroom bulkhead. Connecting the noontime plots provides a lifetime track of the ships movement in the Pacific. A photo of that chart was taken in Pearl Harbor on the way home after the war and most crew members got a copy of the picture but even an 8" X 10" photo does little to show detail.
    So, working from the original chart and the ships log (which recorded noontime position), a full size copy was plotted on a blank Pacific Ocean Plotting Chart and reduced to 14-1/2" X 23" and again any crew member, for whom we had an address, received a copy that could become a wall hanging without overwhelming the room. Three of the following four pages are copies of various sections of the Odyssey being West, Central & East Pacific, respectively. The fourth page is an index chart showing the entire area with horizontal bars across the bottom to show the longitudes covered by each of the three sections. The three sections overlap slightly so that prints of the three can be joined to provide a more detailed track of the Bangust's WWII travel.
    The Bangust Odyssey covers a single deployment (from the time we left the U S mainland until we returned to the U S mainland) of 646 days (prox. 22 months). During that time we were underway 77%+ of the time. The balance of the time we were alongside a repair ship, in a floating dry dock or anchored in some atoll with the engines shut down awaiting our next assignment.

    Errata: There is one error on the chart as printed: The date shown as 8/1/43 just below the words "Post Shakedown Avail" (near Los Angeles) should be 8/1/44 meaning 8 Jan 1944.

    (To view and print the Odyssey Chart you will need the Free Acrobat Reader)

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    Hank Davis or Don Pond

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