Joseph VANASKY Jr

Source : Hudson Louie

Source : Frogman

Map of Normandy American Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington, Arlington County, VIRGINIA

Source : Patrick Ryan McGrady

USS Osprey 

The Osprey was a Raven-class minesweeper built at Virginia’s Norfolk Navy Yard and commissioned in 1940. Her job was simple but far from easy: to clear any waters through which forces had to pass of enemy mines. It was, as you can imagine, a difficult and dangerous job, and one with incredibly high stakes. For the Normandy invasion, everything hinged on getting a critical number of forces onto the beaches. If too few Allies got ashore due to the thousands of mines Germany had sown, winning the war became a much more difficult proposition. No wonder the motto of WWII minesweepers was “Where the fleet goes, we’ve been.”

After service in the Caribbean and North African waters, by 1944 Osprey was assigned to the minesweeping flotilla clearing the Channel prior to D-Day. About 5:00 PM on June 5, the vessel ran into a magnetic mine off of the coast of the Isle of Wight. The explosion occurred near the storage lockers for the ship’s ammunition, which magnified the damage. Heroic effort by the crew extinguished the resulting fires, but could not stop the flooding. They abandoned ship, leaving behind six crewmen, almost certainly killed in the initial blast. Their bodies were never recovered.

These six men are considered the first Allied forces to die in the invasion, perishing on June 5, 1944. Because our Necrology Wall at the National D-Day Memorial records only the names of those KIA on June 6, these pre-D-Day deaths are not represented. But to pay due tribute to these six heroes and to see that their memory does not fade away, here are the names of six sailors who gave their lives to ensure that the great invasion the next day would succeed :

• Lieutenant Junior Grade Van HAMILTON, ARKANSAS
• Seaman Second Class John MEDVIC, PENNSYLVANIA
• Fireman First Class Walter O’BRYAN, NEW YORK
• Quartermaster Second Class Emery PARICHY, ILLINOIS
• Motor Machinist Mate Second Class Joseph VANASKY, OHIO
• Motor Machinist Mate Third Class Cleo WHITSCHELL, MICHIGAN