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Medal of Honor Recipient

Francis Edward Ormsbee Jr

U.S. Navy · World War I

MOH-RC-002580Source-based record

The award

Representative medal image: Navy star design with the 1913 blue ribbon. Not a portrait or a photograph of this recipient’s own medal.
Navy Medal of HonorRecorded presentation: 1918

Portrait not yet available. Representative medal shown.

About this image

Representative form selected from the recorded presentation year (1918), not authenticated medal-object provenance. The Navy used more than one design in this period. No Tiffany Cross attribution is inferred from service or conflict alone.

Medal imagery and historical designs →

Medal of Honor

September 25, 1918

Pensacola, Florida

Rank at action
Chief Machinist's Mate
Service
U.S. Navy
Conflict
World War I
Unit or command
Naval Air Station, Pensacola
Presentation date
December 31, 1918

The Citation

Sources ↓
For extraordinary heroism while attached to the Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Fla., on 25 September 1918. While flying with Ens. J. A. Jova, Ormsbee saw a plane go into a tailspin and crash about three-quarters of a mile to the right. Having landed near by, Ormsbee lost no time in going overboard and made for the wreck, which was all under water except the 2 wing tips. He succeeded in partially extricating the gunner so that his head wa0dGjWE3Djkoa6eg5RlF42 aAtl3yZvhand held him in this position until the speedboat arrived. Ormsbee then made a number of desperate attempts to rescue the pilot, diving into the midst of the tangled wreckage although cut about the hands, but was too late to save his life.

Sources & record notes

General Order comparison: pending. Current-profile review does not mean that the underlying original order has been examined.

  1. Francis Edward Ormsbee Jr — current Society profile ↗Congressional Medal of Honor Society · Checked 2026-08-31

    current identity, service, action metadata, and citation comparison

Transcription, metadata & provenance notes
Award ID
MOH-AW-002592
Transcription status
Legacy full text · current reference profile matched
Last source check
2026-08-31
Recorded order reference (not verified against the original)
436
Later or highest recorded rank
Chief Aviation Pilot
Accredited to
Florida
Archive transcription SHA-256
fcedc4b926faa74bd643514498d58ff7e4f54e024211ffa3599fa002a22560ce

Legacy transcription retained without substantive editing; rendered current reference profile variants documented in the Phase 10 evidence snapshot.

The structured profile omits a unit, while the citation identifies Naval Air Station, Pensacola. The citation command context is controlled and the empty structured unit remains separately represented. Recovery provenance: the prior live-verification result is reconstructed because the described P10-C060–P10-C062 restart files were not physically available; the verified P10-C059 authority, retained web-reference metadata, legacy record, and prior session evidence are all preserved.

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