| Residences | Civilian Occupation |
| Delaware, Pennsylvania?, Colorado | College student |
| Branch | Service Number |
| U.S. Naval Reserve / U.S. Marine Corps Reserve | U.S.N.R. 4139931 / U.S.M.C.R. 034877 |
| Theater | Station |
| Zone of Interior (American) | U.S. Naval Air Training Center, Pensacola, Florida |
Early Life & Family
Walter Moore Boggs, Jr. was born at the Homeopathic Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware, on March 23, 1921. He was the third child of Walter Moore Boggs (1895–1969) and Beatrice Boggs (née Beatrice Snitcher Haman, 1898–1978). His father had served in the U.S. Army stateside during World War I and was working as a shipfitter when his son was born.
Boggs’s eldest sister died as an infant before he was born. He grew up with an older sister, Mary Lee Boggs (later Evans, 1919–2007) and a younger brother, Robert Haman Boggs (1923–2003). He was Presbyterian.
When Boggs was born, his parents were residents of 508 North Jackson Street in Wilmington. The family may have later lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since Robert Boggs was born there on July 28, 1923. Boggs was recorded on the census in April 1930 living in Saint Georges, Delaware, at the home owned by his maternal grandparents, William S. Haman (1868–1949) and Ella Boggs (1877–1958). Boggs shared the home with his grandparents, parents, and two siblings. Boggs’s father was listed as a cooking utensil salesman.
Census records indicate that by April 1, 1935, the Boggs family had moved to a home along “Road #18 Christiana–Newark” (today’s Route 273) in unincorporated New Castle County near Christiana. The family was recorded there on the next census on April 15, 1940, which listed the elder Boggs as a salesman for an aluminum ware company. In his enlistment application, Boggs stated he lived in Christiana for nine years.
Journal-Every Evening reported that while in high school, Boggs “was active in Sports.” He graduated from Newark High School in 1939. That summer, he worked for Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine as an inspector. Later that year, on September 15, 1939, Boggs began college as a pre-law student at the University of Virginia. He was an average student, though his grades improved during each year of his college career.
During the summers of 1940 and 1941, Boggs worked as a deckhand and traffic handler for the Delaware–New Jersey Ferry Company, which operated a ferry across the Delaware River between New Castle, Delaware, and Pennsville, New Jersey.
Journal-Every Evening reported that around 1942, Boggs and his family moved to Denver, Colorado, where he “was a member of the Lakewood Country Club and the Central Presbyterian Church.”
During the spring of his junior year, when he registered for the draft on February 16, 1942, Boggs was living at the Theta Delta Chi house in Charlottesville, Virginia, though he gave his permanent address as Denver. The registrar described him as standing about five feet, 9½ inches tall and weighing 150 lbs., with brown hair and gray eyes. One month later, on March 19, 1942, Boggs dropped out of college with the explanation that he planned to go to work. He had completed 37 college credits of 60 required for a degree. After leaving college, Boggs moved to 1550 Adams Street in Denver and worked as a junior process engineer for Remington Arms at the Denver Ordnance Plant. His father and brother also worked there, though later in the war his brother served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Military Career
Boggs volunteered for the U.S. Navy’s V-5 (Naval Aviation Cadet) program, enlisting in Denver on August 31, 1942. He listed patriotism as his reason for enlistment. At the time, he was described as standing five feet, 8½ inches tall and weighing 139 lbs., with brown hair and eyes. Interviewers from the Naval Aviation Cadet Selection Board described him as confident and polite and rated him as above average officer material. Boggs committed to serve four years on active duty and to remain unmarried for his first two years of service. The Naval Aviation Cadet Selection Board in San Francisco, California, placed Aviation Cadet Boggs on inactive duty until a training slot became available.
Aviation Cadet Boggs was ordered to active duty effective December 15, 1942, beginning the Civilian Pilot Training Program at Adams State Teachers College, Alamosa, Colorado. A set of orders dated February 3, 1943, noted that he had since he had “successfully completed the required flight and ground school courses under the CPT Program, and being in excess of accommodation at a Navy Pre-Flight School, under current quotas, you will proceed to your home at Denver, Colorado[,] and await assignment to a U. S. Navy Pre-Flight School.”
On March 10, 1943, Aviation Cadet Boggs began U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School at St. Mary’s College, California. After completing pre-flight on May 31, 1943, he was dispatched to the Naval Air Station, Los Alamitos, California. Boggs reported there the following day to begin his primary flight training. On July 26, 1943, Boggs was in a group of 239 aviation cadets transferred to the U.S. Naval Air Station, Dallas, Texas, to continue their primary flight training. He arrived there two days later. On September 5, 1943, Boggs completed primary and was dispatched to the U.S. Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida, for further training.
Aviation Cadet Boggs reported for duty at Pensacola on September 9, 1943. By February 1943, he was further assigned to the Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Bronson Field, Pensacola, Florida.
By early 1944, Boggs had nearly completed his training. A set of orders to active duty came down on January 11, 1944, in the name of the Marine Corps commandant, Lieutenant General Alexander Archer Vandegrift (1887–1973), that would take effect once Boggs and a group of other aviation cadets had completed their training and been commissioned in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Another memorandum in Boggs’s Marine Corps personnel file from Vandegrift to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox (1874–1944) noted that his graduation from flight training was imminent and recommended his date of rank as a 2nd lieutenant be January 16, 1944, though his precise commissioning date was not known at that time. Knox approved the recommendation.
At around 0800 hours on February 3, 1944, Aviation Cadet Boggs took off from Bronson Field in a Vultee SNV-1 Valiant trainer, Bureau No. 34544. According to his death certificate, about 50 minutes later, he “crashed in a wooded swamp about 1½ miles S.E. of Century, in Escambia County,” Florida. Boggs was killed instantly. An excerpt of an administrative report in his personnel file stated in part:
AC W. M. Boggs was due to return to station at 1030. About 1100, station received call from near Century, Florida of a plane crash. At 1415 ground searching party report pilot dead. […]
Cause of crash believed to be bad weather, low ceiling and confusione [sic] of pilot in attempting to maintain contact with ground and fly instruments simultaneously.
The commandant at the Naval Air Training Center, Captain Henry Fahnestock MacComsey (1900 or 1901–1989), sent a telegram notifying Aviation Cadet Boggs’s family of his death the same day. The following day, Boggs’s father sent a response that read in part:
KINDLY SEND THE REMAINS OF MY SON WALTER M BOGGS JR HOME AND HAVE HIM ESCORTED BY WHOM YOU CONSIDER HIS CLOSEST FRIEND[.] ALSO WRITE ME COMPLETE DETAILS OF HIS DEATH I FEEL THIS LOSS IS VERY GREAT TO OUR COUNTRY […] THIS BOY IS WORTHY OF THE BEST YOU AND THIS COUNTRY CAN DO IN THIS SITUATION[.] PUT HIS WINGS AND LIEUTENANTS UNIFORM AND INSIGNIAS ON HIS BODY AS HIS ONE AMBITION WAS TO WEAR THE OFFICER UNIFORM OF THE NAVY AIR CORP[.]
On February 11, 1944, Ensign Linus Parker Hall, Jr. (1916–2005) wrote to Boggs’s father on the letterhead of Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Bronson Field, Sixth Battalion, Flight Brigade, Pensacola, Florida, regarding the disposition of Aviation Cadet Boggs’s personal property. He added: “Your son had an excellent record here, and was held in high esteem by his shipmates. He possessed to a marked degree the qualities desired in a Cadet and a future officer.”
Boggs was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. His parents were also buried there after their deaths.
During World War II, posthumous commissions in the U.S. armed forces were rare but were permissible under certain conditions. Public Law 680, approved July 28, 1942, and retroactive to September 1939 specified that one of those situations was if a person
shall have successfully completed the course at a training school for officers and shall have been recommended for appointment to a commissioned grade by the officer commanding or in charge of such a school, and who shall have been unable to receive or accept such appointment by reason of his death in the line of duty[.]
On February 25, 1944, Captain MacComsey recommended Boggs be commissioned under that law, arguing: “Aviation Cadet Walter M. BOGGS, USNR, had to [sic] all intents and purposes completed the requirements for designation as a Naval Aviator although he had not completed training in his final squadron.”
No further action was taken until after the war, but on December 26, 1945, Boggs was posthumously commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Marine Corps Reserve backdated to January 16, 1944, his recommended date of rank. The following month, the Marine Corps sent Boggs’s mother a copy of his commissioning document and naval aviator certificate.
Although Boggs had lived almost his entire life in Delaware, because he had entered the service from Colorado, the State of Delaware Public Archives Commission deemed him not a Delawarean. As a result, he was honored in neither the Delaware memorial volume nor the monument at Veterans Memorial Park in New Castle.
Notes
San Luis Obispo
On February 6, 1943, Boggs was ordered to “proceed to the U. S. Naval Flight Preparatory School, San Luis Obispo, California, reporting February 9, 1943 for duty.” Those orders may have been rescinded since his service record booklet does not mention San Luis Obispo at all.
Ensign Linus Parker Hall, Jr.
The officer who wrote to Boggs’s father was a legendary football star for Ole Miss and the Cleveland Rams before joining the Navy.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the Delaware Public Archives for the use of their photo.
Bibliography
Boggs, Beatrice Haman. Individual Military Service Record for Walter Moore Boggs Jr. Undated, c. September 2, 1946. Record Group 1325-003-053, Record of Delawareans Who Died in World War II. Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware. https://cdm16397.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15323coll6/id/17760/rec/2
“Cadet Killed As Plane Falls.” The Pensacola Journal, February 5, 1944. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/121596262/walter-m-boggs-plane-crash/
Census Record for Walter M. Boggs, Jr. April 11, 1930. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Record Group 29, Records of the Bureau of the Census. National Archives at Washington, D.C. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GRHM-WSK
Census Record for Walter M. Boggs, Jr. April 15, 1940. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Record Group 29, Records of the Bureau of the Census. National Archives at Washington, D.C. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89MR-M9QQ
Certificate of Birth for Walter Moore Boggs, Jr. March 23, 1921. Record Group 1500-008-094, Birth Certificates. Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-6LNZ-WLW
Certificate of Death for Infant Boggs. December 8, 1917. Record Group 1500-008-092, Death Certificates. Delaware Public Archives, Dover, Delaware. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-698R-PD
Draft Registration Card for Robert Haman Boggs. July 21, 1942. Draft Registration Cards for Colorado, October 16, 1940 – March 31, 1947. Record Group 147, Records of the Selective Service System. National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMG-WWHX-V
Draft Registration Card for Walter M. Boggs. September 12, 1942. Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration. Record Group 147, Records of the Selective Service System. National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BB-NQSG-K
Draft Registration Card for Walter Moore Boggs, Jr. February 16, 1942. Draft Registration Cards for Colorado, October 16, 1940 – March 31, 1947. Record Group 147, Records of the Selective Service System. National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMG-WWHX-5
”Flier Is Killed; Marine Lost.” Journal-Every Evening, February 7, 1944. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/121597754/walter-m-boggs-crash/
“Linus Parker ‘Bullet’ Hall.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/21681861/linus-parker-hall
“MacComsey Is Now Head Of Pensacola NATC.” The Pensacola Journal, January 21, 1944. https://www.newspapers.com/article/182698838/
Navy Medical File for Walter M. Boggs. National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri.
Official Military Personnel File for Walter M. Boggs, Jr. Official Military Personnel Files, 1885–1998. Record Group 24, Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri.
Official Military Personnel File for Walter M. Boggs, Jr. Official Military Personnel Files, 1905–1998. Record Group 127, Records of the U.S. Marine Corps. National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri.
“William S Haman.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/181289211/william-s-haman
Last updated on October 10, 2025
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