Talk:Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund Award

Source of the awards information

@Dual Freq: Your edit summary asks a good question. I started this article eight years ago, when I was doing a lot of ship articles. This was before I really knew much about citing references inline. My former ship, USS Rankin (AKA-103), won the award in 1958. I was aware of that fact when I was aboard from 1961-1963, but I never knew what the award consisted of, what it was for, etc.

When I started the article, I did a lot of research on the award, including finding copies of the newspaper articles that appear in the reference list. I don't remember where they came from, and I might even still have some of the microfilm printouts around here somewhere. As I recall, I had some correspondence with a LT on OPNAV staff, who provided a decent but incomplete list. There have been some (many?) awardees added to the list since then, I think by various editors.

I'm a pretty experienced editor now, and I know how to cite inline references. It would be useful, very hard, and probably not very worthwhile, to go back and find references for the 100+ awardees. What is in my mind is that this list is basically pretty accurate, even though we lack a record of where the information came from. Lou Sander (talk) 20:26, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Too bad the USN doesn't have a list somewhere on the web. Hopefully the template will encourage others to cite sources when they add to the list. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:05, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I will look around here for it. I used to save all the laboriously-collected reference materials for my Wikipedia edits, but there got to be too much of it, and I really never had to go back to it, so I stopped saving it. Lou Sander (talk) 22:52, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Funding

In trying to find out how much money the award payed out to verify the $500 or $1500 listed in the article, I stumbled across a 501(c)(3) called "Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund" [1] I was under the assumption that the funds were in government hands, but looking at the forms, the fund says it distributed $3,329 each to Stetham and Laboon in 2012 [2] or [3] which agrees with the 2012 winners awarded in 2012. Is this the actual trustee for for the funds or is this something separate? Would it be good enough to use as a source for the award amount? --Dual Freq (talk) 22:15, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

From what I remember, the funds might well be in private hands. The Navy decides the awardees, and the fund trustees dole them out and manage the fund. That is only from memory, though.

Also, the Stars and Stripes article seems to be incorrect. I've never heard of more than one ship from each coast getting the Marjorie Sterrett award. They DO seem to have it confused with the "E". Lou Sander (talk) 01:57, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

1961

From "Destroyer Wins Efficiency Award". Pacific Stars and Stripes. December 2, 1961. p. 6., 14 ships received the award for fiscal year 1961. For the Pacific fleet, the article listed USS Somers (DD-947), USS Lipan (AT-85), USS Diodon (SS-349), USS Providence (CLG-6), USS Mathews (AKA-96), USS Whippoorwill (AMS-207) and USS Ticonderoga (CV-14). The Atlantic Fleet awards were listed as USS Vulcan (AR-5), USS Proteus (AS-19), USS Little Rock (CLG-4), USS Wallace L. Lind (DD-703), USS Grant County (LST-1174), USS Ability (MSO-519) and USS Forrestal (CV-59). Even though the article spends over a paragraph retelling the story of the creation of the Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund, I think they confused this award with the old Battle Efficiency Award, before the Navy E Ribbon version. One item that doesn't make sense here is that Blandy isn't listed in Atlantic Fleet like table lists. The fund winner for FY1961 pretty much has to be one of the 7 listed. I'll just leave this on the talk page in case it comes up later. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:36, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe I was wrong above, 14 ships apparently received the award for FY 1962 as well.[4] They must have changed the way it was awarded for those years. --Dual Freq (talk) 15:46, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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Sources

I've recently updated this article with new awardees for 2015-2018. The sources for 2008 onward are messed up, and I don't know how to fix them, let alone have the time to do it. Here's what's going on: Sources up to 2007 seem to be OK, with archived stuff from the Wayback Machine. 2008-2014 are not, and give "not found" reports. There must be a way to find the archived stuff from those years, maybe in the material above this note, but I can't figure it out, and don't have time right now. I have a few sources for the recently-added years, but I'm rusty on adding them, so I didn't try. I hope this helps some good Samaritan. Lou Sander (talk) 16:02, 28 March 2020 (UTC)