WEILER-FRANCIS

SURVIVED  USS HOUSTON  SINKING

BUT  DIED  IN  CAPTIVITY  AS  POW

Francis Brooks Weiler was reportedly born on November 10, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in June 1939 and was subsequently assigned to the heavy cruiser, USS HOUSTON (CA-30)

On the evening of February 28, 1942, HOUSTON was operating off Java, Dutch East Indies, with the Australian cruiser HMAS PERTH.  The Allies believed that Sunda Strait was free of enemy vessels as the last intelligence reports indicated that Japanese warships were no closer than 50 miles.  However, a large Japanese force had secretly assembled nearby before making an invasion assault on Java.  At 11:06pm lookouts on PERTH sighted an unidentified ship which was quickly identified as a Japanese destroyer.  PERTH engaged the destroyer but rapidly a large fleet of about twenty Japanese warships appeared and surrounded the two Allied ships as apparently neither force had earlier detected the other.  Shortly thereafter both cruisers were receiving direct hits from close-range gunfire.  Shortly after midnight, HOUSTON was struck by a torpedo and began to lose headway.  Although HOUSTON’s gunners reportedly scored hits on three different destroyers and sank a minesweeper, three more torpedoes struck HOUSTON in quick succession, she lost headway and within a few minutes rolled over and sank.  HMAS PERTH was also sunk during the battle.

LTJG Weiler was reportedly seriously wounded during the action.  Of the 1,061 crewmembers, 368 men reportedly survived the sinking only to be soon captured by the Japanese.  Fortunately, LTJG Weiler was one of the men to survive the sinking.  Upon becoming a POW, he was reportedly transported to a Dutch hospital in Pandegland, Java, where he died of his wounds on March 26, 1942.  Suspecting he did not have long to live, Weiler reportedly gave his Naval Academy ring to a Dutch nurse in the hope she would contact a U.S. naval officer and give it to him.  Instead she gave it to a Dutch doctor who, either willingly or otherwise, gave it to a Japanese officer.

In early November 1942, a Marine captain, involved in a firefight on Guadalcanal handed a ring to another officer known to be an Academy graduate, commenting that the ring had been removed from the hand of a dead Japanese soldier.  Later examining the ring, the Marine officer realized it belonged to LTJG Weiler, a former classmate.  Being actively engaged in the Guadalcanal battle, the officer gave the ring to an Army officer who was leaving the area.  The ring reportedly passed through several other individuals before an Army enlisted man contacted LTJG Weiler’s father in March 1943 and explained how he came into possession of the ring.  A Marine courier retrieved the ring and returned it to the Weiler family in Germantown, Pennsylvania.  In 1961, the family of LTJG Weiler donated the ring to the Naval Academy Alumni Association and it is now displayed at the Naval Academy Alumni House.

Unfortunately, the body of LTJG Weiler was never recovered and thus his name has been inscribed on the Tablets of the Missing at the American Cemetery and Memorial in Manila, Philippines.  Of the original 368 Navy and Marine Corps personnel from HOUSTON taken prisoner by the Japanese, 77 (21%) reportedly died in captivity.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)