Ships
- USS Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) Commanding officer from 26 November 1944 · Relieved on 23 August 1945
Source-limited. Only a few reliable facts about Captain Rule could be found, and they are given below. Nothing has been filled in.
Adrian Ogle Rule Jr. was born on 19 December 1896. Family records and a St. Louis neighborhood history show that an Adrian Ogle Rule, very likely his father, was a St. Louis real-estate man: vice president of the Kilgen-Rule Real Estate Company, a director of the Parkview Realty and Improvement Company, and one of the first three trustees of the Parkview private place. An Adrian O. Rule III, presumably his son, was born on 12 December 1927 and served in the military. This bio does not claim that the son grew up in Parkview, because no source found says so.
He entered the Naval Academy and graduated with the Class of 1919. NavSource shows him as a lieutenant (junior grade) in the destroyer Gwin (DD-71) from March 1920 to January 1921. He reached commander on 1 August 1939 and temporary captain on 18 June 1942.
His war command was the new Essex-class carrier Bon Homme Richard (CV-31). She was commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 26 November 1944, and the Brooklyn Eagle reported that about 10,000 guests came aboard, mostly families of her officers and crew. It was described as the first public commissioning since Pearl Harbor. Under Rule she left Norfolk on 19 March 1945, reached Pearl Harbor on 5 April and joined Task Force 38 off Okinawa on 6 June. From 7 to 10 June she took part in the strikes on Okino Daitō Jima, and from 2 July to 15 August she flew strikes against Japan with the Third Fleet. Rule handed her over to Captain Harold F. Fick on 23 August 1945, a week after the cease-fire.
Flag, date of death: one source (World War II Database) gives his dates as 19 December 1896 – 11 August 1946. Another summary gives 1948. Neither has been checked against a grave or obituary. A Find a Grave or Arlington lookup is needed before a death date is published.
Sources
uboat.net, Allied Warship Commanders: Adrian Ogle Rule, Jr. (USNA 1919, born 19 Dec 1896; ranks; CV-31 command).
NavSource, CV-31 and DD-71 commanding officers.
World War II Database, "USS Bon Homme Richard (CV-31) Slides Down the Building Ways" (commissioning, Brooklyn Eagle report, dates).
Parkview neighborhood history (parkviewneighborhood.org); sortedbyname.com Rule family records.
Live Pacific Ships CV-31 page (operations, from DANFS).