A careless word... A needless sinking is OWI Poster No. 34, signed Anton Otto Fischer and printed in 1942. A cargo ship burns at sea while survivors crowd a lifeboat in the foreground, some rowing and one slumped over (NAID 513601).
The painting
Fischer painted the aftermath, not the attack. A cargo ship is on fire, with smoke and flames rising, and in the foreground a lifeboat is packed with survivors. Some of them pull at the oars. One is slumped over. The archive's description names no submarine, no spy, and no enemy anywhere in the picture.
A careless word....
....A NEEDLESS SINKING
[signature:] ANTON OTTO FISCHER
[imprint:] OWI Poster No. 34. Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D.C. U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1942-O-502219
Issuer and record
The imprint numbers the sheet 34 in the Office of War Information series, and the Government Printing Office job number carries the year 1942. The National Archives copy is in Record Group 44, and the record lists it as a public-domain U.S. government work. Its audience field says "Domestic public"; its purpose field says "Warn or inform." The archive also holds a sister sheet by the same artist, A careless word... A needless loss. Neither record gives a print run.
The chain it implies
The archive tags the poster as a fear appeal. The two halves of the slogan sit at the top and bottom of the sheet, with the lifeboat between them, and the dots carry the argument: a word is spoken, and then a ship is lost. How the word travels from the speaker to whoever sank the ship is left out. A viewer who has said something about a sailing date is left to picture this lifeboat.
Sailing dates were real secrets, and asking civilians to keep them was reasonable. The Roosevelt government also asked the press, through a voluntary code, to hold back ship sailings, as the Roosevelt administration essay records. A poster that makes the reader feel responsible for a sinking is a stronger tool than a code an editor could refuse. Fischer's picture is honest about the cost of a sinking. The causal link from a careless word to a sinking is the part the poster asserts and does not show.
The same warning runs through other sheets on this site: Wanted! For Murder, the Seagram loose lips sheet, and OWI Poster No. 23, A Careless Word... Another Cross, which swaps the lifeboat for a grave marker. The Office of War Information hub indexes the series.
Sources
- FRAME object record, A careless word... A needless sinking, 1942. Office of War Information (OWI Poster No. 34), artist Anton Otto Fischer. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-155, NAID 513601, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
