Ships
- USS Ingersoll (DD-652) Captain from 31 August 1943
A. Veasy, a commander in the United States Navy, was the first commanding officer of the destroyer Ingersoll. The ship, DD-652, was a Fletcher-class destroyer built at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. Her keel was laid on 18 February 1943, and she was launched on 28 June 1943. She carried the names of Rear Admiral Royal R. Ingersoll and of his grandson, Lieutenant Royal R. Ingersoll II, who had been killed aboard the carrier Hornet during the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Ingersoll was commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 31 August 1943, with Veasy in command.
The new destroyer spent September and October 1943 on shakedown training off Bermuda, then returned to Boston. On 10 November she embarked Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll, Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, for a fleet review. He was the son of the admiral and the father of the lieutenant whose names the ship carried. On 29 November Ingersoll sailed for the Pacific. She passed through the Panama Canal, stopped at San Diego, and arrived at Pearl Harbor on 21 December, joining the fast carrier force that was preparing to invade the Marshall Islands.
On 16 January 1944 Veasy took Ingersoll to sea with the Southern Bombardment Group. The destroyer opened fire on Kwajalein on 30 January and lay offshore the next day as the landings went in, furnishing gunfire support. After the atoll was secured she entered Majuro on 5 February. She sailed again on 16 February to screen the fast carriers in the raid on the Japanese base at Truk on 17 and 18 February.
Through the spring and summer of 1944 Ingersoll remained with the carrier task forces in the central Pacific, serving in Destroyer Squadron 50. She screened strikes in the western Carolines and supported the landings at Hollandia. On 1 May she took part in the bombardment of Ponape. In June she screened the carriers during the Marianas campaign, including the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 June, and she stayed with that operation into August.
On 7 September 1944 Ingersoll bombarded Peleliu ahead of the assault. Early in October she sortied with Task Force 38 for carrier strikes against Okinawa and the Philippines. Late that month, in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, part of Admiral William F. Halsey's force turned south after Japanese ships passed through San Bernardino Strait, and Ingersoll joined the cruiser group under Admiral DuBose for the long chase. She fired one torpedo at long range, and the pursuit ended without a gun action against the remaining Japanese heavy ships. Veasy remained in command through the first weeks of the Luzon campaign. His tour as captain ended on 14 February 1945, as Ingersoll left the forward area for overhaul on the West Coast.