Woodstock, IL.
Date of Birth: 3 April, 1920
Date of Death: 20 April, 1944
Branch of Service: USAAF (United States Army Air Forces)
Rank: Corporal
Unit: 32nd Photographic Squadron, 5th Photographic Reconnaissance Group, 15th Air Force
Place of Death: 30 miles off the coast of Cape Bengut, Algiers, Mediterranean Sea. 150 miles southwest of Sardinia, 300 miles west of Sicily. Aboard Liberty Ship USS Paul Hamilton when it was sunk.
Corporal Charles R. Whiting
To friends and family, he was never Charles Jr.—he was Bob. Born on April 3, 1920, to Charles Sr., a commercial bank cashier, and Louise Whiting of Woodstock, Bob was their only child. He graduated from Woodstock High School in 1939 and enlisted in the Army Air Forces on April 10, 1943. Standing 5’11” and weighing 155 pounds, he was described by the local paper as “one of Woodstock’s finest young men.”
Corporal Whiting served in the 32nd Photographic Squadron, 5th Photo Reconnaissance Group, part of the 15th Air Force, activated on July 23, 1942. The unit’s mission was aerial photography and reconnaissance—mapping enemy logistics, defensive positions, and strategic targets to guide Allied decision-making. The group first deployed to North Africa, supporting the Allied push that drove Axis forces across the northern Sahara. After the liberation of Morocco and Algeria during Operation Torch, the 5th Photo Reconnaissance Group relocated from New Jersey to Bizerte, Tunisia in August 1943. With the North African campaign concluded, the group turned its attention to Italy, southern France, and the Balkans. Bob and the 32nd received orders to move to Bari, in the Apulia region of southern Italy.
He never made it. On the evening of April 20, 1944, the SS Paul Hamilton—a Liberty ship named after the third U.S. Secretary of the Navy—was crossing the Mediterranean with personnel and supplies as the battlefront pushed north. The ship was carrying a cargo of high explosives when a formation of twenty-three German Junkers Ju 88 bombers spotted the convoy off the coast of Algiers and attacked. An aerial torpedo struck the ship’s hold, detonating the explosives in a catastrophic blast. The Paul Hamilton sank in roughly thirty seconds. All 580 men aboard were killed. Only a single body was ever recovered.
Back in Woodstock, the Daily Sentinel reported that “the entire community is shocked by the news” after the Whiting family received a telegram reporting Bob missing. Friends and family did not yet know whether he had been in Africa or at sea. A local journalist connected the dots, linking a radio broadcast about a military ship “hit by a torpedo” in the Mediterranean to the telegram delivered to Charles and Louise.
Corporal Charles Robert “Bob” Whiting is buried at the North Africa American Cemetery in Carthage, Tunisia, among 2,841 American service members who gave their lives in the North African and Mediterranean campaigns.
By Austin May
5th Photographic Reconnaissance Group
32nd Photographic Squadron
North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial
Carthage, Delegation de Carthage Tunis, Tunisia
To visit the cemetery, click on his Memorial
