Krasny, John Friedrich (34170536)

John Friedrich Krasny
Personal details
Born	1914
Died	8 April 2005
Nativity	Austria
Religion	Catholic
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	34170536
Rank	Technician Fourth Grade
Camp Ritchie	Class 10 (23 July – 20 September 1943)
Section	5B
Enlisted	Ft Bragg, North Carolina

Research notes on this page are compiled from the source file and later edits. They may be unverified, incomplete, or incorrect, and should not be treated as established fact. Please correct the article or add sources on the talk page. For class-roster terms, see About the data.

Sources & confidence: Treat Research notes as leads, not settled fact. Prefer NARA, the class roster, newspapers, Find a Grave, or published histories for contested claims. Mark unsourced claims with {{Needs source}}, or explain disagreements on talk. Baseline import notes: About the data.

John Friedrich Krasny (1914 – 8 April 2005) was a Ritchie Boy (from Austria; Catholic) who trained at Camp Ritchie in class 10.

Biography

Krasny was a Ritchie Boy. John was a native of Vienna, Austria, and worked in his mother’s textile factory in Czechoslovakia until he immigrated to the United States in 1938. Krasny said that interrogators discovered in advance the German troop buildup for the Battle of the Bulge.

Krasny returned to the United States and received a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1948 from the University of Denver. John passed away April 8, 2005 at the age of 90. He was a laborer in textile factories in North Carolina.

Army in September 1941 and trained in intelligence at Camp Ritchie, MD. He was attached to the 5th Armored Division from D-Day through the end of the war and used his language skills as an interrogator of German prisoners and civilians. He told his family that he and other “Ritchie boys” used creative methods to gather intelligence — for instance, they would telephone an Axis armaments factory, impersonate a German officer and attempt to order certain weapons to ascertain whether production was underway.

In his unpublished memoir, Mr. He was awarded a Bronze Star by the Army. While in Colorado, he indulged his love of skiing long before ski lifts were common in the mountainous West.

He settled in the Washington area, working for what was then known as the National Bureau of Standards and later for the Gillette Research Institute on textile research-and-development projects. He received a master’s degree in statistics from American University in 1958. In 1972, he returned to the Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), where he worked on garment and furniture flammability.

He was the author of more than 80 technical papers and received a Bronze Medal from the Department of Commerce.

Research notes

• Class 10 GerOB NBS/NIST
• OB 29 BS

Technical record

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	91
Nara ASN	34170536
Nara Name	KRASNY JOHN F
Nara State	46
Nara County	21
Nara POE	4625
Nara DOE	130941
Nara Grade Alpha	PVT
Nara Grade Code	8
Nara Branch Alpha	BI
Nara Branch Code	0
Branch	Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
Nara Term or Enlistment	0
Term of enlistment	Unknown
Defer. Date	0
Nara Source	0
Nara Nativity	N2
Nara Year of Birth	14
Nara Race	J
Nara Race Description	White not yet a citizen
Nara Education	7
Nara Civilian Occupation	50
Nara Marital Status	1
Nara Height (inches)	67
Nara Weight (lbs)	140
Class_ASN	34170536
Class_Name	KRASKY, John F.
match_method	asn_exact_name_compatible
row_source	both

Sources

• Camp Ritchie class roster (classes 1–31), merged research file
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
• Ritchie Boys of WWII Facebook page, post dated 2022-12-06 (1 post)