This journal at the Smithsonian might give some details of the Bushnell expedition,
Therein lies a tale. Way back when we were first considering whether the Nikumaroro hypothesis was worth testing, I discussed it with my old friend Tom Crouch at NASM. He said, "As I recall there was a Smithsonian ichthyologist (fish guy) named Schultz on a US Navy expedition that surveyed those islands back before the war. I think he wrote a paper. It should in the Castle (Smithsonian headquarters building). I'll be happy to check it out for you."
I thanked him profusely.
A couple weeks later he called and said, "I read Schultz's paper. He was all over that island. No sign of anything unusual."
Just for the heck of it, the next time we were in DC, Pat and I stopped by the Castle and looked at Schultz's paper ourselves. He was not aboard for the November cruise. He was never on Gardner. I've never trusted Tom Crouch since.
Hi y'all, I'm newly registered, but have been lurking for decades. Fascinating history. I'll try to do an intro over on that thread WIGART.
About this USS Bushnell topic: starting a few months ago (slow, yes, have my own 'ship'- AKA: Hole in water you throw time and money into). I really dug into it (from my limited resources) using my Ancestry Fold3 access. I have concentrated before on my uncle's WWII destroyer, the USS Boyd, DD-544; uncle was an MM2c, KIA off Nauru with 12 other shipmates on 8 December 1943 (their Captain was LtCmdr U.S.G. Sharp, later ADM and comcicpac during early VN war) .
I have the Muster Rolls for the entire "1939 Survey Area, South Pacific Is." expedition, from the Bushnell's Norfolk departure onward. A fair amount of information can be gleaned from even Muster Rolls. I made a rudimentary 'Movement of Ship' doc from it.
The four hydrologists (surveyors) embarked at Norfolk on 4 March 1939, bound for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to start, and remained through the vessel's next assignment into 1940 (at least).
The ichthyologist was embarked in San Diego on 1 April 1939, and left the ship on its' first return to Honolulu, in July/August 1939, after the initial cruise to the survey area.
The crew and ship spent a fair amount of time in their base port, Naval Station, Tutuila, American Samoa (Pago Pago).
One hydrologist's wife (Witt) is listed as a passenger on one of the Bushnell's several non-survey excursions, to some outlying AS islands for a Flag Day event that may have lasted a week (looked like a party cruise...among others, embarked a large AS Navy rate band, wives, children, servants, etc).
The ship's crew was usually between 195-210 enlisted, with probably 10-15 officers. No officer roster found yet, I do have a 1939 Navy "Directory" which lists all Navy and USMC officers and assignments, but it would be a massive job to filter out the Bushnell's officers from that pdf.
The civilian survey crew's names and titles were:
Kennedy, George F. Assoc. Hydro Eng. (presumed the lead, as a report was written by him and is in the ships' Survey Papers on TIGHAR here (Part 4, pp 8-10):
https://tighar.org/wiki/USS_Bushnell_Survey_(1939) )
Bigelow, Henry W. Jr. Asst Hydro Eng.
Witt, Edward J. Asst Hydro Eng.
Lang, Sheldon Junr. Hydro Eng.
Schultz, Leonard P. Ichthyologist
John
(edit) Notice that my comment is still open to 'modify', so I'll try to add the source pdf pages for the "List of Nonenlisted Passengers of USS Bushnell" here (more as a test of upload):
"at date of sailing from Pearl Harbor, T.H. for 1939 Survey Area Date 17 April 1939" (and San Diego to PH)