About Patrick J. Loftus

Patrick J. Loftus

United States Navy

Korean War

1950 - 1953

HM3

Patrick J. Loftus was born January 25, 1930, in Youngstown, Ohio.  He was the youngest of four, born to Joseph and Edna M. Loftus.  His older brothers served in WWII in the Navy and Army.  When the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950 between North Korea and South Korea, Pat felt it was his duty to volunteer for service, electing to join the Navy as a Medic. His father asked him to stay at home and work in the steel mill where he would have been considered an essential worker being exempt even when the draft was implemented later.  He chose a job as a Navy Medic, a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), that could have been a very dangerous job in in a combat theater.  He would be assigned to the USS Albany (CA-123).

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The Albany would be the fourth ship to carry the name, it was a United States Navy Oregon City-class heavy cruiser, commissioned on June 15, 1946, initially operating in the Atlantic, she departed two years later to serve in the Mediterranean Sea and off South America. Primarily she served as a unit of the Sixth Task Force within the Mediterranean Sea. This task force was focused on supporting anti Communist nations in the region.

Deployments for the Albany;

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• January 1951 to February 1951,         Deployment to Brazil

• January 25, 1951, to June 19, 1953    Shellback Initiation Atlantic Ocean

• January 1954 to August 1955             Mediterranean -Lebanon

The Korean War was the first military action of the Cold War.  The conflict often referred to as the forgotten war, it was one of the first major proxy wars of the Cold War. Fighting ended in 1953 with an armistice but no peace treaty, the conflict is ongoing and creating a divided peninsula that is North Korea and South Korea.