US Navy Seaman 1st Class Raymond Lee Dungan was born in Escambia County, Alabama on November 5, 1921, the son of Ernest Edward Dungan (1883-1956) and Arcola Elizabeth Beck (1889-1965). His parents were married in 1908 in Marengo County, Alabama but two years later found themselves in the small community of Riverhill in Clarke County. By 1920, they had relocated to Walnut Hill in Escambia County, Florida and were still farming. Again in 1930, he had moved his family to Baldwin County and had become a farm overseer followed by another move by 1940 to Ensley. There, he was a carpenter for a construction company while his son Raymond was working as an auto mechanic. Raymond would attend Tate High School but did not graduate although his sister Margaret did in 1933 and his brother William Travis in 1943.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, Raymond would enlist in the US Navy on October 17, 1940, in Birmingham, Alabama. After basic training, he was sent to the destroyer USS Buck for duty on January 15, 1941.
During WWII his destroyer served as a convoy escort from the seaports along the eastern seaboard with ports of destination such as Newfoundland, Iceland, Northern Ireland, North Africa, and the Caribbean. Her duties during this period was to screen convoys of merchant ships from any German submarine attack. To do this they investigated unidentified contacts and acted as a sheep dog to the merchantmen to keep them in formation.
On August 22, 1942, the Buck was escorting convoy AT-20 that was comprised of troops ships and priority supplies desperately needed in England. In the dense fog off Nova Scotia, the Buck collided with the New Zealand troop transport SS Awatea, loaded with 5,000 soldiers. The destroyer's stern was all but sliced off, causing the loss of both of her propellers. Seven sailors were loss overboard in the mishap, including 1st Class Raymond Lee Dungan. Simultaneously, a second destroyer DD-444 USS Ingraham was also rammed by the oil tanker SS Chemung causing the Ingraham's stern depth charges to explode. The explosion sank the Ingraham within minutes taking 218 of her crew with her with only eleven survivors. While this catastrophe was going the USS Buck was taken under tow and reached Boston four days later where she underwent repairs. Returning to duty, the Buck was sent on patrol in the Tyrrhenian Sea off Salerno, Italy. On September 10, 1943, she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-616 causing a huge underwater explosion, sinking the Buck and killing 123 sailors with only 97 survivors.
Raymond's family and those of the other six sailors were notified that their sons were lost and never recovered. Their names were entered on the East Coast Memorial as "Missing in Action."
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