Subject: Retirement (March 23, 1948)

23 March 1948

From: Chief of Naval Personnel.
To: Lieutenant LaFayette R. Hubbard, USNR,
Box 297,
North Hollywood, California.

Subj: Retirement.

Ref.:
(a) Your letter of 10 March 1948
(b) Section 302, Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, as amended.

1. By reference (a) you request retirement for physical disability.

2. By reference (b) the Secretary of the Navy is directed to establish boards to review, at the request of any officer retired or released from active service, without pay, for physical disability pursuant to the decision of a retiring board or a board of medical survey, the findings and decisions of such board for the purpose of further adjudicating his right to retirement for physical disability. In carrying out its duties under this section such board of review shall have the name powers as exercised by the board whose findings and decisions are being reviewed.

3. To warrant retirement for physical disability an officer of the Navy or Naval Reserve must be permanently incapacitated for active naval service. It is to be expected that many of the officers who served in the Reserve components during the war will have aggravated a previously existing defect to a disabling degree or may  have suffered a disease or injury in the service which causes a partial disability even to the point of providing a more or less serious handicap in the resumption of normal civilian activities. These officers are eligible to receive compensation from the Veterans’ Administration; this was the obvious intent of Congress in providing for such compensation. An officer may not be considered for physical disability retirement, however, unless his physical incapacity is the result of an incident of the service and such that he is incapable of performing his duties at all, or in other words, he must be unable to perform them as to reasonably fulfill the purpose of his employment.

4. A review of your record indicates that final action on the Board of
Medical Survey which considered your care on 10 September 1945 found you to be fit for duty ashore, You were examined as an incident to your separation processing on 6 December 1945 and again found physically qualified, and in view thereof it does not appear that you have incurred incapacity for the navel service while serving on active duty in the Naval Reserve.

5. Despite the foregoing, however, you are legally entitled to a review of the Medical Survey Board proceedings in your case under the provisions of reference (b) to further determine your right to retirement, and you should submit such request to the Chief of Naval Personnel if you so desire to exercise your legal right.

The stamped envelope forwarded with your letter is returned herewith.

F. S. Keeler,
By direction.