Neatoramanaut Minnesotastan was helping out his mom sort through some old memorabilia when he came across this gem: a pilot's note to communicate news to passengers in flight. Sort of like an inflight tweet from the 1940s.
The note above, stating "Our naval base at Guam is destroyed" must've been a doozy!
"Is" could be shorter for the sake of communication. It reminds me of when telegrams were trimmed down to bare bones.
What is the current state of Guam? "It is destroyed." "Has been" weakens the force of the sentence, since it's a more passive form of the verb.
The form strikes us as more adjectival in form.
It also reminds me of Julius Caesar's "Vixerat", which could be translated literally as "he had lived", but more colloquially as "he had finished living", or "he died" (in reality, Caesar was the cause of his finishing his life). (or was it more than one person? I can't remember exactly)
http://www.neatorama.com/2011/08/10/early-airline-customs/
I think my record is now five for this month?