Ships
- USS Crossbill (AMc-9) Lieutenant (junior grade), officer in charge, 21 March 1941 – 16 October 1942 · The next name in the DANFS officer roster begins on 16 October 1942, and that date is used as the relief · Officer in charge of record on 7 December 1941 · The morning account names the crew and does not say whether he was on deck
Robert W. Costello, a lieutenant (junior grade) in the Naval Reserve, was the officer in charge of the coastal minesweeper Crossbill when she was placed in service on 21 March 1941. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships entry for Crossbill, written by Thomas Sheppard and dated 7 September 2017, styles him Lt. (j.g.) Robert W. Costello, D-V(G), USNR, on that day, and Lt. (j.g.) Robert W. Costello, USNR, on the officer list. The next name in that roster is Lieutenant (junior grade) Chester M. Sturgeon, USNR, on 16 October 1942. The roster gives only the day each man assumed charge. Sturgeon's date is used here as the end of Costello's tour, and the entry does not say in words that the relief happened on that morning.
Birth, home, and family were not in the entry.
No academy class and no earlier ship appear on the line. The designator D-V(G) is printed with his name on the day she was placed in service. The entry does not explain it. Crossbill had been the fishing boat North Star, built at San Pedro in 1937 by the Watchorn Yacht and Boat Works. The Navy bought her on 31 October 1940 for $41,000, and the conversion began that day. Costello's name enters the record on the day she was placed in service, at San Diego, under the Eleventh Naval District.
On 1 April 1941, ten days after she entered service, she was assigned to the Fourteenth Naval District. She left San Diego on 16 May with other coastal minesweepers, escorted by the oiler Tippecanoe (AO-21), and reached Pearl Harbor on 27 May. Through the rest of 1941 she made occasional one-day sweeps around the base. He is the officer in charge of record across that whole passage and across 7 December. The morning account speaks of the crew. It does not say whether he was on deck.
Before dawn on 7 December she swept with Condor (AMc-14). They found no mines. Condor's executive officer, Ensign Russell G. McCloy, was certain he had seen a periscope. Condor called the destroyer Ward. Ward's first search found nothing. The sweepers turned back. At 0508 Crossbill reached the entrance and the guards opened the submerged net gate. The practice was to leave it open until the whole group was in, because opening it again could take ten minutes, and it was still open when Condor followed. What Condor had seen was one of five Type A midget submarines. Ward later sank one and reported it. The warning moved slowly.
At 0753 the crew saw Japanese planes bombing Hickam Field and opened fire. They expended 236 rounds, recorded no hits, took no damage, and had no one wounded. The caliber of the ammunition is not in the account. She then went on with local sweeping.
His tour, on the reading that ends it when Sturgeon's begins, also covers the search of 23 and 24 April 1942 with Vireo. Crossbill's entry calls that search unsuccessful. Vireo's entry says one body was found off Pepeekeo Point and names Sacramento as well. Nothing in either entry says what Costello himself did that day. The Hawaiian rotation among Pearl Harbor, Bishops Point, Honolulu, and Port Allen on Kauai is described for the ship across the whole war, not month by month, so it cannot be divided cleanly at 16 October 1942.
No later command, promotion, or date of death was found. The entry stops at the officer roster.