well maybe I was one of the lucky ones because I lost no data on my radio man and they
even merged the two together

edit

wasnt the issue only for people who where in different fleets on the merged servers?

If you had played on both servers that were merged together
(Yamato+Iowa)(Nelson+_Bismarck) your friend data was erased with the merger. This had
side effects that caused problems for Iowa and Bismarck fleets. This is why 1 week later
they just erased all fleet data. While they may have been able to fix it it would have
taken a lot of time and effort to do so.

actually wasn't it only the fleet data that got reset?

I didn't lose my friends list.....

ben - sounds like you radio man is bugged - maybe contact support

Everyone's radioman was reset during the merge, or the wipe 1 week later but whenever it
happened you'll have to add your friends back manually.