Evidence
8 evidence entries recorded; each entry has a stable permalink (#ev-1 … #ev-8).
-
[1]research packet ki-packet.md (2 sources cited) [nhhc_danfs]
- Finding type
- vessel_history
- Finding
- Identity packet verdict: VERIFIED (secondary source; date conflict noted)
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- supporting
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Limitations
- qualifier: VERIFIED (secondary source; date conflict noted)
- Evidence ID
- uss-rombach-de364-pkt-ki-packet-md
-
[2]DANFS, Rombach (DE-364) (verbatim transcription via hazegray mirror; live NHHC page https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/r/rombach.html returns 404) [nhhc_danfs]
- Locator
- DANFS entry: namesake paragraph + specifications block + service narrative (3 paragraphs)
- Finding type
- vessel_history
- Finding
- DANFS record for this hull: namesake LTJG Severin Louis Rombach, USNR, naval aviator of Torpedo Squadron 6 (Enterprise CV-6), missing in action at Midway 1942-06-04, posthumous Navy Cross; DE-364 laid down 1944-03-20 by Consolidated Steel Corp., Orange, Tex.; launched 1944-06-06, sponsor Mrs. Severin L. Rombach (widow); commissioned 1944-09-20, Lt. Comdr. Calvert Burke Gill; shakedown Bermuda; Boston departure 1944-11-29, Manus arrival 1945-01-07; convoy escort Hollandia-Leyte Gulf 1945-01-24 to 03-02; Manila Bay area; Local Naval Defense Force Lingayen Gulf from 04-26; hunter-killer group off western Luzon 05-27 to 08-08; carrier hunter-killer group, Leyte-Okinawa convoy routes until after 1945-08-14; air-sea rescue late August; occupation landings Jinsen 09-05, Taku 10-01, Tsingtao 10-05; Magic Carpet escort 10-08 to 11-22; assigned Pacific Reserve Fleet Seattle July 1946 for 13th Naval District reserve training; PhibPac exercises 1952 and 1953; eight weeks per year 1952-1957 schoolship at Fleet Sonar School San Diego; decommissioned Bremerton 1958-01-09; stricken 1972-03-01 after INSURV inspection found her unfit. Spec block: 1,745 t full, 306 ft, 36 ft 7 in beam, 24 kt, complement 223, class John C. Butler.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- supporting
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-28
- Study period
- 1914-1972 (namesake biography + hull service)
- Population
- Consolidated Steel construction trades 1944; wartime and reserve-era crew (design complement 223)
- Limitations
- DANFS documents identity, construction, service history, and striking - not materials or asbestos content. Live NHHC page 404s (standing link-rot defect); verbatim mirror transcription cited. Laid-down date conflicts with secondary tabulations (1944-04-10) - carried in gaps.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-rombach-de364-01
-
[3]USS Rombach (DE 364), Ship's History submission - CO to Secretary of the Navy, letter serial DE364/A12-1/jcs (328), 7 December 1945 (scan hosted by NavSource) [other_primary]
- Locator
- Letter DE364/A12-1/jcs (328), 1945-12-07, paragraphs 1-9 (scan 06364wh.jpg)
- Finding type
- vessel_history
- Finding
- The ship's own official war-history letter (C. Burke Gill, commanding throughout the war): built by Consolidated Steel Corp. at Orange, Texas; commissioned 1944-09-20; post-shakedown availability of two weeks at Boston Navy Yard; departed continental limits 1944-11-29 with Escort Division EIGHTY-FIVE; Manus arrival 1945-01-07; station ship Manila Bay under Commander Seventh Amphibious Forces (SOPA quarters/communications) 03-04 to 04-21; Commander Local Naval Defense Forces Lingayen Gulf 04-26 to 05-26; Escort Division 85 hunter-killer ops incl. escorting U.S. and British submarines; Leyte-Okinawa convoy-route patrol 08-09 to 08-22; weathered a typhoon (over-100-kt winds, 50-ft seas) 08-29 to 09-03 while escorting USS Currituck (AV-7), Halfmoon (AVP-26), Barataria (AVP-33) - commended by task unit commander; occupation landings Jinsen 09-05, Taku 10-01, Tsingtao 10-05; Magic Carpet escort 10-09 to 11-22 calling at Jinsen, Taku, Chefoo, Weihaiwei, Tsingtao, Shanghai; seven floating mines sighted and destroyed.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- supporting
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-28
- Study period
- 1944-1945
- Population
- Wartime crew under Lt. Comdr. Calvert Burke Gill; Boston Navy Yard availability-period workers
- Limitations
- Primary document (official Navy correspondence) accessed as a NavSource-hosted scan - host is a volunteer compilation site; the letter itself is the ship's official submission. Contains no asbestos or materials content. Covers wartime only - postwar record is not in this document.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-rombach-de364-02
-
[4]NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center / NCEI, Accession 7600493 - water temperature and other data from ROMBACH, 1952-08-26 to 1957-06-21 (Scripps Institution of Oceanography submission) [other_primary]
- Locator
- NODC Accession 7600493 dataset landing page (temporal coverage 1952-08-26 to 1957-06-21)
- Finding type
- historical_record
- Finding
- A U.S. government archive (NOAA/NODC, now NCEI) holds an oceanographic observation dataset collected aboard USS Rombach spanning 1952-08-26 through 1957-06-21 - independently corroborating the DANFS account of her 1952-1957 Fleet Sonar School schoolship duty out of San Diego.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- supporting
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-28
- Study period
- 1952-1957
- Population
- Schoolship-period crew and embarked personnel, 1952-1957
- Limitations
- Confirms the vessel was operating and collecting data in the stated window; documents nothing about materials, refits, or asbestos. Observation platform identification is by ship name in the NODC accession.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-rombach-de364-03
-
[5]Bureau of Ships, Ships' Data, U.S. Naval Vessels, Vol. 1 (Jan 1945), design-group table row 6 (WGT) - plus Atlas class profile john-c-butler-class (ev-01/-02/-05) and Jack v. Borg-Warner Morse Tec LLC, W.D. Wash. 2:17-cv-00537, ECF 738 att. 1 [other_primary]
- Locator
- BuShips SDB 1945 v1 pp. 234-235 design-group table; class profile ev-john-c-butler-class-01/-02/-04/-05; CourtListener docket 6100500 ECF 738 att. 1
- Finding type
- asbestos_application
- Finding
- Era/design inference: DE-364 is a BuShips design-group-6 (WGT) destroyer escort - 2 'D' express boilers 435 psi/750 deg F (Combustion Engineering per the navypedia boiler-block map, which places DE-339-372 on CE boilers), 2 Westinghouse geared turbines, 12,000 shp, 2 shafts, 24.3 kt. A 1944-built steam DE carried period-standard asbestos applications: fireroom and machinery insulation, steam-line lagging, valve and flange gaskets, packing, evaporator/distiller insulation, and deck/fireproof coverings. The class's litigation record (Jack v. Borg-Warner, naming sister DE-446) advances at pretrial level the theory that DE evaporator insulation was Navy-specified and asbestos-containing; the Navy spec suite that litigation cites (NAVSHIPS 250-000(39) Thermal Insulation 1945; spec 32F3a 'Felt, Insulating, Asbestos' 1945; BuEng Manual ch. 13) is the era's controlling insulation documentation.
- Verification
- inferred
- Role
- supporting
- Documentation level
- class_or_era
- Accessed
- 2026-09-28
- Study period
- 1944-1958 (service); class-wide design era 1943-1945
- Population
- Consolidated Steel (Orange) construction trades 1944; crew 1944-1958
- Limitations
- Class/era inference only - no hull-level material schedule, survey, or litigation names DE-364. Boiler-builder attribution (Combustion Engineering) rests on a secondary block map, not contract documents. Establishes no quantities and no individual exposure. The DE-446 litigation materials are pretrial recital, not adjudicated fact, and concede non-asbestos insulation was possible.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-rombach-de364-04
-
[6]CourtListener API v4 opinion and RECAP docket searches: 'USS Rombach', 'Rombach', 'DE-364' (see search_ledger sl-uss-rombach-de364-08 through -11) [court_record]
- Locator
- CourtListener API v4 /search/ type=o and type=r, queries logged in search_ledger
- Finding type
- litigation_documented
- Finding
- CourtListener sweeps found no qualifying asbestos litigation naming this hull. 'USS Rombach' (opinions): 1 hit - In re Petrobras Securities Litigation, S.D.N.Y. 2015 - a name collision: 'USS' is the lead-plaintiff acronym (Universities Superannuation Scheme) and 'Rombach' enters via the securities-law precedent Rombach v. Chang, 355 F.3d 164 (2d Cir. 2004). 'Rombach' (opinions): 843 hits, all person-name collisions (surname litigants - criminal, divorce, securities, bankruptcy matters) in the relevance-ranked results; none reference the vessel. 'DE-364' (opinions): 17 hits, all numeric-string collisions (statute/section/page/docket-number references); none vessel-related. 'Rombach' (RECAP dockets): 2,497 hits, all person-name dockets (bankruptcy, Social Security, civil rights, securities); none asbestos- or vessel-related. Classification: no qualifying asbestos litigation; every hit is a name or string collision.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- negative_finding
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-28
- Study period
- 2026-09-28
- Limitations
- CourtListener coverage is not PACER-complete; state-court and unindexed dockets are outside the sweep. The 'Rombach' opinion corpus (843 hits) was sampled at the relevance-ranked top rather than paged exhaustively; the surname-collision pattern was uniform across the sample. Absence of a located case does not prove no case was ever filed.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-rombach-de364-05
-
[7]GAO, Navy Efforts To Protect Workers From Asbestos Exposure, HRD-80-2 (Oct 18, 1979) [gao]
- Locator
- GAO product page HRD-80-2
- Finding type
- gov_survey
- Finding
- GAO documented the Navy's asbestos-protection program: standing policy from 1975 removed asbestos insulation only when damaged or required for repairs, modified in 1979 to selective replacement in high-maintenance areas - under which original-era insulation typically remained in place for decades unless a yard period disturbed it. Relevant context to this hull's 1944 build and 1958-1972 reserve-fleet lay-up.
- Verification
- verified
- Role
- context
- Documentation level
- context_only
- Accessed
- 2026-09-28
- Study period
- 1979 (report); policies 1975-1979
- Population
- Navy shipyard workers; reserve-fleet maintenance personnel (program context)
- Limitations
- Program-level documentation, not hull- or class-specific; establishes nothing about materials aboard DE-364. gao.gov full text returns HTTP 403 to automated fetches; content taken from the product-page description.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-rombach-de364-06
-
[8]NavSource Destroyer Escort Photo Archive, USS Rombach (DE 364) page - status line, City of Vancouver Archives photo citations, and DANFS/NHHC cross-links [other_primary]
- Locator
- navsource.net/archives/06/364.htm status block and photo table; photo nos. CVA 447-8704/-8704.1/-8704.3
- Finding type
- vessel_history
- Finding
- Secondary compilation carrying items not in DANFS: '10 April 1944' keel-laying (conflicts with DANFS's 20 March - gap); decommissioned at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton 1958-01-09; 'Struck from the NVR' 1972-03-01; 'Sold for scrapping' 1972-12-19. Identifies official-archive photographs of this hull: City of Vancouver Archives, Walter E. Frost fonds, CVA 447-8704 and CVA 447-8704.1 (1948-04-03) and CVA 447-8704.3 (1954-06-02).
- Verification
- unverified
- Role
- archival_lead
- Documentation level
- ship_specific
- Accessed
- 2026-09-28
- Study period
- 1944-1972
- Limitations
- Volunteer-compiled secondary source - the sale date and 10 April keel date are not confirmed by a located primary record (NVR excludes pre-1987 disposals; catalog search did not surface a disposal card). Vancouver photo identifiers are archive-catalog leads verified only to NavSource's captions; the archives site returned 403 to automated fetch. Unretrieved primary leads: NARA RG 24 deck logs, RG 19 General Information Books, the INSURV report behind the 1972 striking.
- Atlas source
- true
- Evidence ID
- ev-uss-rombach-de364-07
