A Purple Heart To John Maloney Who Was Killed In Action During A Kamikaze Attack

Two-piece construction, bronze gilt and enamels, engraved "JOHN MALONEY" on the reverse, 35.2 mm x 43.5 mm, bronze oak leaf cluster on an original ribbon with brooch pinback, intact enamels, near mint. 

Footnote: John Maloney was serving with the United States Army 1889th Support Group as an Engineer, Aviation Battery, when he was Killed in Action on January 12, 1945, while aboard the Liberty Class cargo ship SS Kyle V. Johnson, as the result of a Kamikaze attack, while in transit to the Philippine Islands. The ship had been named for a Merchant Seaman aboard the SS Maiden Creek in the Mediterranean Sea, who died when it had been hit by torpedoes from the German U-boat U-371 on March 17, 1944. There were 500 Army troops and 2,500 tons of vehicles and gasoline in drums aboard the Kyle V. Johnson as she steamed toward Lingayan Gulf on January 12, 1945, in a 100-ship convoy about evenly divided between ships and LSTs (landing ships). At 0130, the convoy was attacked by six or more planes, one of the suicide planes being hit by 20-mm gunfire and crashing into the starboard side of the ship at the number three hatch. The engine plowed through the hull-plating into a 'tween decks crowded with troops and thence into the lower hold. Said a survivor: "There was a blinding flash and an explosion so heavy it blew the steel hatch beams higher than the flying bridge." The ship dropped out of the convoy to fight the fire, extinguished the flames and then rejoined the fleet, but with 129 men killed (1 crew and 128 U.S. Army) and many injured.