JFK , FDR, LBJ are known by those letters. Don’t recall any other presidents who are known that way. Also RFK but of course he was never president.
To ask another question: Why would anything be named “John F. Kennedy” in that year, when he was still relatively unknown? I don’t recall anything named after him until after the assassination.
There wasn’t anything named for Kennedy in 1955 - Marty called a street by the name he was familiar with, from 1985.
TR used to be in his own time, but not any more. Truman was sometimes referred to by HST, but not that often.
The newspapers used initials in headlines for long presidential names. Generally, presidential names were short: Taft, Wilson, Coolidge (though he was often referred to as “Cal”), Hoover, Truman, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Trump. Eisenhower is an exception, but he was “Ike” in headlines (The NY Times didn’t like the nickname and set up a special font with tight kerning to reduce the size of the name).
I don’t know about that there’s plenty of World War 2 Medal Of Honors for Captains of ships that were lost that they either commanded or were using as flagship.
Mervyn S. Bennion - USS West Virginia
Isaac C. Kidd - USS Arizona
Franklin Van Valkenburgh - USS Arizona
Albert H. Rooks - USS Houston
Daniel J. Callaghan - USS San Francisco
Norman Scott - USS Atlanta
John P. Cromwell - USS Sculpin
Ernest Evans - USS Johnston
All of whom went down fighting, not sitting idly on the surface waiting to be rammed.
Kennedy was lauded for his actions after the boat was sunk. There have been many criticisms about his actions that led to the sinking. That’s why he was awarded a medal for lifesaving that can be awarded in both war and peacetime instead of a combat award. His actions while in contact with the enemy were not award worthy. If his father wasn’t the ambassador to the UK he might have been court martialed instead.
I’ve seen Nixon called “RN,” but only in print—never spoken aloud. Nixon himself titled his memoirs RN.
Back when the Nixon Library was privately run, they had a message board called the Nixon Forum. At the time, I had a historical interest in Nixon and Watergate, so I hung out there for a while. (Oddly enough, it was the most polite and friendly message board I’ve ever been on.) Everyone there called Nixon “RN.”
Or RMN, the “M” being for Milhouse (of course). Likewise, Reagan was RWR, the “W” being for Wilson.
Cite? Never heard of this.
To be fair, there’s a certain amount of ambiguity already inherent in the name “Hill Valley”.
Note that every single example you’ve given the captain or admiral died in the action. It’s a lot easier to give a medal to someone who died in action, since you don’t have to worry about giving him another ship.
And your list includes a few ships that survived anyway:
The West Virginia wasn’t sunk at Pearl Harbor, it was badly damaged but repaired over 3 years and saw later service in WWII.
The San Francisco wasn’t sunk either.
The Sculpin was scuttled by Captain Cromwell to keep it (and himself) out of Japanese hands. He could have surrendered had he chosen to.
Milhous, actually.
George W. Bush is still referred to as “W” by some people. I am actually surprised no one mentioned it yet.
**D’OH! ** :smack:
Try The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power by Garry Wills, Professor Emeritus of History at Northwestern University. (Little, Brown and Company; 1981) Especially pp. 127–139, “Creating the Kennedys.”
Aside: Years back, I was doing a crossword puzzle, and the clue was “Successor to HST”. Of course, they wanted “DDE”, but I was racking my brains trying to figure out how to fit “NGST” into three letters. Because of course, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is the Next Generation Space Telescope (this was before it was named after James Webb).
And using initials for presidents seems to be getting more common. I’ve seen GWB and GHWB used very often, BHO fairly often, DJT sometimes, and occasionally even WJC. The first two are probably because it’s the easiest way to disambiguate the names, and that might be what set the precedent for the others.
I’ve seen HST in old books - Allen Drury had a headline in one of his novels comparing “HH” (the fictional President in the novel) with “HST”
Here’s the actual text of Kennedy’s award.
Note that it clearly says “following the collision and sinking.”
Whether Kennedy was a bad captain is still being debated. PT 109 wasn’t equipped with radar, the night was moonless and foggy, and he had maybe 15 seconds to get out of the way before being hit by the Japanese destroyer. Things didn’t go perfectly in those 15 seconds.