Kenneth Jahnke; phony Pearl Harbor survivor

One of our readers sent us their work on this character, Kenneth Jahnke, who claims to have retired from the Navy as a Commander. He claims that he was a seaman on the USS OKLAHOMA on December 7th, 1941 when the ship was sunk in Pearl Harbor. We wrote about it the other day, when DPAA released the information that they’d recovered the final 61 service members who died of the 429 total. Jahnke was born April 12, 1928 – so he was actually 13 years old on the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked, although he claims that he was 17.

He goes on to claim that he fought in several battles during the Second World War, that he went on to serve in the Korean War and finally Vietnam. Here’s his bio from the Veterans’ History Project at the Library of Congress;

We learned a long time ago that the Library of Congress openly admits that they don’t check the veracity of the veterans that they interview, so it’s really not a History Project as I understand the terms, but rather a bar-room bullshit session without the beer.

And that’s what this is – Bullshit. Jahnke joined the Navy in 1946 – a year after the war ended. He left the service in February 1954. He never served on any of the ships that he claimed to serve upon. And, oh, he was a seaman E-3 when he left the Navy – not a commander. He did serve at Pearl Harbor but well after the Japanese had surrendered.

On December 5, 2014, Hugh Hewitt had Jahnke on his radio program and “Commander” Jahnke told the story about how he’d been blown off of the USS OKLAHOMA and rescued by a whaler. Here’s that 22-minute portion of the segment. Our reader tried to get Hewitt to correct the record, but it seems that he was too busy with other issues. He wasn’t too busy to have a complete fraud for filler on his show, though.

In the interview, Jahnke claims that he’s in this iconic photo of General MacArthur when he returned to the Philippines;

Our tipster found these inconsistencies in Jahnke’s radio interview;

1) He said he went from the hospital to the USS O’Bannon, and fought in Midway, the Coral Sea and Tarawa – but the O’Bannon didn’t leave Boston until August 1942 (http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/destroy/dd450txt.htm) – that’s two months after Midway and three months after the Coral Sea. And during Tarawa (November 1943), she was at least 1200 miles away at Vella Gulf/Tulagi, or else steaming back to the west coast for repairs that lasted until spring.

2) He said he commanded the USS Lloyd Thomas (DD-764), but he’s not included in their list of commanders:

http://dd764.org/scuttlebutt3/about-us/commanders/

3) He said he was on the O’Bannon, escorting the Missouri into Tokyo Bay on September 1st, 1945; after the war, he said he served in Alaska aboard the USS Bagaduce, a sea-going tug. But the Bagaduce was stationed in San Diego and San Francisco during the war, and decommissioned there June 22nd, 1946 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bagaduce_%28AT-21%29).

Then there are smaller things that don’t make sense:

4) He was on MacArthur’s staff at Leyte in October 1944, and waded ashore right behind MacArthur – so he couldn’t have still been on the O’Bannon, since the O’Bannon escorted reinforcements to Leyte, then spent the battle patrolling the entrances to Leyte Gulf – she wasn’t anywhere near MacArthur and the USS Nashville when he went ashore. But he was back on the O’Bannon to escort the Missouri into Tokyo Bay – he couldn’t have still been on MacArthur’s staff, because MacArthur stayed in Japan when the O’Bannon sailed home (http://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/index.asp?pid=45002). So he went from the pretty busy O’Bannon, to MacArthur’s staff, then back to the O’Bannon, all as a junior enlisted sailor?

5) He somehow made E3 (Seaman 1st Class) in the couple months between enlistment and Pearl Harbor, while still 17 years old – that stretches credulity, to get two promotions, in that period of time, at that age.

6) Seamen First Class were Pay Grade 5 (http://world-war-2.wikia.com/wiki/United_States_Navy_Rank_Insignia), and in 1942 they made $66/month, not $19/month. (http://www.cv6.org/company/muster/organization.htm#Grades)

7) He sure wasn’t he only Navy survivor at the 2010 memorial service: this site shows some photos from the 2010 memorial service: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/national-park-service-historian-daniel-martinez-speaks-in-news-photo/107380549

8) How was he physically able to spend 8-10 hours pulling drowning men from the ocean after sustaining injuries so severe during the torpedo attack that when he got to the Naval Hospital back in Long Beach, they thought he’d lose his legs and an arm?

9) Finally, seriously – he thinks he still has that flag he was about to hoist on the USS Oklahoma, somewhere back in his house?!?!?!?

Yeah, I know, he’s an 87-year-old man just telling some made-up war stories, you know, until he starts making his false stories part of the historical narrative like this old liar has done. He tells Hewitt that he’s never kept up with any other sailors who shared his experiences in the war. Who believes that? We all keep connected to folks who lived the things that we did. But, of course, he didn’t because anyone who was there knew that he wasn’t.

Category: Phony soldiers, Valor Vultures