UnderMiner
Silver Member
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2014
- Messages
- 3,865
- Reaction score
- 9,882
- Golden Thread
- 2
- Location
- New York City
- 🥇 Banner finds
- 2
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab Excalibur II, Ace 250
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
Today I found the remains of a highly damaged WWII-era dog tag. Cleaned it up and just barely managed to decipher it. It belonged to Alfred F. Pompay who lived at 540-80 Street, Brooklyn NY. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces and became a flight officer where he served in the 315th Fighter Squadron, 324th Fighter Group. He was killed in action on June 17th 1944 likely while providing air support to ground troops over Italy. His body was recovered and buried in the Florence American Cemetery in Toscana, Italy. This dog tag must have been recovered from his body and returned to his family in Brooklyn... and now here it is 75 years later, recovered one last time:
His grave in Italy, close to where he was killed:
The other finds of the day seem trivial compared to this, but here they are:
3 silver dimes, several nickles, a silver US Navy pin, a UMC pin, a couple silver medallions, a fired .50 cal bullet, many wheat cents, and some other odds and ends.
Fresh from the sand WWII silver USN pin:
You can still see the rifling marks on this fired .50 cal, amazing it survives intact:
What Flight Officer Pompay's dog tag looked like fresh out of the ground (Note this is a mirrored image of the back of the dog tag, the front is almost completely illegible):
Front of the dog tag:
Cleaned up (back, mirrored):
His grave in Italy, close to where he was killed:
The other finds of the day seem trivial compared to this, but here they are:
3 silver dimes, several nickles, a silver US Navy pin, a UMC pin, a couple silver medallions, a fired .50 cal bullet, many wheat cents, and some other odds and ends.
Fresh from the sand WWII silver USN pin:
You can still see the rifling marks on this fired .50 cal, amazing it survives intact:
What Flight Officer Pompay's dog tag looked like fresh out of the ground (Note this is a mirrored image of the back of the dog tag, the front is almost completely illegible):
Front of the dog tag:
Cleaned up (back, mirrored):
Upvote
23
Are you able to contact the family and return it?
