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Posted on 08/21/2004 11:18:48 PM PDT by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 Kilroy Was Everywhere During the World War II, the phrase 'Kilroy was here' began to appear wherever US troops were. It was often accompanied with the image of a face with a long nose and two big round eyes with small dot eyeballs peeking over a wall or a line representing a wall. Everything else, except sometimes his fingers gripping the top of the wall, was hidden behind the wall itself. Kilroy is a familiar image, whose origin is something of a mystery. In 1946, the American Transit Association had a radio programme called Speak to America. This programme sponsored a nationwide contest in an attempt to solve the mystery behind the origins of the mystical Kilroy. Speak to America found James J Kilroy of Massachusetts as a result of their search. That James J Kilroy was the originator of 'Kilroy was here' is currently the most commonly believed explanation for the phenomenon.  James J Kilroy was a ship inspector at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, USA. It was his responsibility to check on how many holes a riveter had filled in a shift on any given day. In order to prevent double counting by dishonest riveters and to prove to his supervisors that he'd been doing his work, he began marking 'Kilroy was here' inside the hulls of the ships being built. He used yellow crayon so it would be easily visible; this way the off-shift inspectors wouldn't count the rivets more than once and pay the riveter for work he hadn't done. Once the ship became operative, carrying military troops that were headed overseas and bound for the war, the phrase was a complete mystery. Why it was there and being found in such out of the way places made it all the more mysterious. All they could be certain of was that Kilroy, whoever he was, had 'been there first'. As a joke, troops began placing the graffiti wherever the US forces landed and claimed it had already been there when they'd arrived. Whoever originated it, Kilroy quickly became the United States super GI who had always already been wherever men were sent by the military. The game quickly became a challenge to put the picture and slogan in the most unlikely places imaginable first.  From the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum, Columbus, Indiana. "The ubiquitous Kilroy, his long pathetic nose hanging over the wall with the two peering eyes above it, always the spectator, never inside. 'Kilroy was here.' It was marked on the standing walls of ruined buildings, on latrine walls and other places from Seattle to Miami and from Italy to Australia. No one ever knew who started it. Everybody understood it. If something bad had happened, Kilroy was responsible. If something good had happened, Kilroy had been outside looking in." - James Jones According to author Charles Panati, it's supposed to be atop Mount Everest, on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, on the underside of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, on the Marco Polo Bridge in China, on huts in Polynesia, on a girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York and scrawled in the dust on the moon. Panati also wrote that an outhouse was built, during the Potsdam Conference in July of 1945, for use exclusively by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. The first of the three to utilize the facility was Stalin. Upon emerging he inquired of his nearby aide, 'Who is Kilroy?' This was supposedly overheard by a translator and is where the story comes from. Kilroy and Hitler - The Rumour Near the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler was absolutely and completely paranoid regarding one insurgent in particular. This individual seemed able to get into everything and anything that was thought to be secure in Nazi, Germany. He (Hitler) ordered his best men to begin actively searching for this super-spy and all troops were commanded to shoot and kill this menace. The 'spy' Hitler was looking for was none other than Kilroy! GIs in occupied territory and spies in the German Army were vandalizing Nazi bases and equipment with the Kilroy logo and its well-known slogan. It wasn't intended as anything more than graffiti and a prank, but by the final year of Hitler's reign, he was convinced Kilroy could penetrate into any secure area and feared for his own safety thinking Kilroy was certain to kill him. Origins Oddly enough, as widespread as the Kilroy phenomenon was there is no concrete evidence to verify either when or where it began, nor who began it in each country (USA, England and Canada). In England, the Kilroy logo was known as Chad and his slogan consisted of 'Wot no...?' The blank was usually filled in with whatever there was a shortage of or whatever was being rationed at the time. The Oxford English Dictionary states that Chad's origin is obscure, but that British Cartoonist George Edward Chatterton may have created it. Though the James J Kilroy story seems to be the most likely point of origin for the 'Kilroy was here' legend, there is possible evidence of occurrences of the Kilroy logo much earlier than World War II.  Though Chad was popular in England, just as Kilroy was in the US military, still nobody (other than James J Kilroy) has stepped forward to claim him as their own invention, even though there were 26 men named Kilroy in the military during WW2. There was also a Canadian version known as Clem and in the late 1960s there was a version in Los Angeles, California that went by the name of Overby. Perhaps the theory of Kilroy being an unknown super soldier wasn't so far off after all...      |
Good morning Mayor.
We are getting lots of needed rainfall here in Oregon and the temps are cooling to the 70's. It just pours down but without the thunder and lightning I'm used to back east. Pretty neat.
Good morning feather.
Yep, wanted to enjoy the cool temps!
Today's classic warship, USS Dayton (CL-105)
Cleveland class light cruiser
Displacement: 10,000 t.
Length: 610’1”
Beam: 66’6”
Draft: 20’
Speed: 33 k.
Complement: 992
Armament: 12 6”; 12 5”
USS DAYTON (CL-105) was launched 19 March 1944 by New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden, N.J.; sponsored by Mrs. H. Rueger, and commissioned 7 January 1945, Captain P. W. Steinhagen in command.
DAYTON arrived at Pearl Harbor 15 May for training, and reached San Pedro Bay, Leyte, 16 June to join the 3d Fleet. On 1 July, she sortied with the Fleet for the final strikes along the Japanese coast, screening the fast carrier task groups and conducting shore bombardments. She entered Tokyo Bay 10 September and, except for a brief period of upkeep at Eniwetok, remained on occupation duty until 7 November when she got underway for San Pedro, Calif., arriving 19 November.
DAYTON sailed from San Pedro 24 January 1946 and arrived at Pearl Harbor 6 days later en route to Japan. Her orders were changed and on 7 February she sailed to join the Atlantic Fleet, conducting training at Guantanamo Bay on her way to Norfolk, her assigned home port.
On 3 February 1947, DAYTON sailed from Norfolk for a tour in the Mediterranean, exercising off Malta, and paying calls, including a diplomatic visit to Istanbul, Turkey, then sailed again to the Mediterranean, acting as flagship for Commander, Naval Forces, Mediterranean, for part of this deployment from which she returned to Boston 30 November.
Following local operations from Newport and another cruise to the Mediterranean between 9 February and 26 June 1948, DAYTON was placed out of commission in reserve at Boston 1 March 1949. USS Dayton was part of the Reserve Fleet there and at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the next dozen years. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 September 1961 and sold for scrapping on 6 April 1962.
DAYTON received one battle star for World War II service.
Morning aomagrat.
The late WWII ships had such beautiful lines. Sighhhh
"I was here and you were gone. Now you're here and I am gone."
Kilroy gone Zen...
On This Day In History
Birthdates which occurred on August 22:
1647 Denis Papin French physicist (Papiniaanse pot, steam machine)
1760 Leo XII [Annibale Sermattei], Italy, Pope (1823-29)
1822 George Stoneman US Union general-major/(Gov-Calif, 1883-87)
1827 Josef Strauss Austria, composer
1827 Joseph Anthony Mower Major General (Union volunteers), died in 1870
1834 Nathaniel Harrison Harris Brig General (Confederate Army)
1836 Archibald M Willard US, artist (Spirit of '76)
1854 Milan I, King of Serbia
1862 Claude Debussy St Germain-en-Laye, composer (La Mer, Clair de lune)
1891 Jacques Lipchitz Polish/French/US painter/cubist sculptor
1893 Dorothy Parker US, short story writer (1958 Marjorie Peabody Award)
1904 Deng Xiaoping Chinese leader (1976-1983)
1908 Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer.(The decisive moment)
1917 John Lee Hooker Mississippi, blues musician (Boom Boom Boom)
1920 Dr Denton Cooley heart surgeon (1st artifical heart transplant)
1920 Ray Bradbury Ill, sci-fi author (Fahrenheit 451, Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles)
1926 Honor Blackman London, actress (Pussy Galore-Goldfinger)
1932 Gerald P Carr Denver Colorado, Col USMC/astronaut (Skylab 4)
1933 Sylvia Koscina actress (Jessica, Hercules)
1934 Norman Schwartzkopf NJ, US General (Liberated Kuwait from Iraq)
1935 Morton Dean Fall River Mass, TV newscaster (CBS, ABC)
1939 Carl Yastrzemski NY, Boston Red Sox great (1967 AL MVP, Hall of Fame)
1940 Valerie Harper Sufferin NY, (Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Valerie)
1942 Kathy Lennon Santa Monica Calif, singer (Lennon Sisters)
1945 Ron Dante Staten Island NY, rocker (Archies-Sugar, Sugar)
1947 Cindy Williams Van Nuys Calif, actress (Shirley-Laverne & Shirley)
1949 Diana Nyad swimmer (1st to swim Bahamas to Fla-1979)
1956 - Paul Molitor, St Paul MN, infielder (Milwaukee Brewers, Toronto Blue Jays, Mn Twins, 1993 World Series MVP)1961 Roland Orzabal singer (Tears for Fears-Shout, Head over Heels)
In one of my previous kobs I would actually schedule some of my work on Sunday nites so I could listen to the good DR. It made a dreary task somewhat more enjoyable, at least for two hours.
Have to get back to work, my son is over helping with weekend #75 of the weekend home improvement project. Only two or three weekends to go, I hope.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
I enjoyed researching this thread. Lots of stories about troops marching through Europe and finding Kilroy had already been there. LOL.
I had no idea the legend was this old!
Hey Sam.
I didn't either.
Good morning, Snippy. You picked a good choice of topics for this morning. :-)
Yes, Kilroy adorned several of my papers when I was in school too. Today's smiley face is the new Kilroy. :-)
Thanks Humal. I'm trying to find something that stays with our mission but is a little lighter, at least for Sundays...short and sweet. All ideas are welcome. ;-)
Hey thank. Kilroy was relentless! I wonder if the GIs today use him. The cartoons were great. Appreciate the ping.
Engineer Dudes!
The soldiers of New York’s 2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry; along with the attached soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division’s Task Force 1-18 Infantry, Task Force 1-77 Armor and the 141st Engineer Battalion of the North Dakota Army National Guard; are thankful to the Yankees organization for donating the hats and their show of support. Due to their efforts, the soldiers got a morale boost and the Yankees may have gained a few more fans, even as far away from the Bronx as North Dakota.
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