Ships
- USS Edsall (DD-219) Captain, 9 August 1937 – 30 September 1937
Anton B. Anderson, whose full name was Anton Bennett Anderson, was an officer of the United States Navy from Montclair, New Jersey. He belonged to the Naval Academy class of 1912. He was a commander by 1937, a captain during the Pacific war, and a rear admiral when he retired.
In the summer of 1937 he was with the Asiatic Fleet. Its destroyers spent the warm months on the China coast and the winter months in the Philippines. Their standing duty was to look after American residents, shipping, and property while China passed from civil war into open war with Japan.
On 9 August 1937 Anderson took command of USS Edsall (DD-219). She was a Clemson-class destroyer built by William Cramp and Sons at Philadelphia, launched on 29 July 1920 and commissioned on 26 November 1920. The name honored Seaman Norman Eckley Edsall, killed on Samoa on 1 April 1899. A. H. Rice was her first commanding officer. In the next two years the command also passed through Robert G. Tobin, Harry Robert Bogusch, Ray P. Helm, William Callender Irving Stiles, and Halsey Powell.
Longer tours on the Asiatic Station followed. Robert Todd Young had her from May 1923 until December 1924, and Lemuel Earl Lindsay held the ship until October 1927. Jules James commanded her into February 1928, and Chauncey A. Lucas through the rest of that year. Thomas Cross Slingluff commanded from December 1928 until July 1930, and Byron Scott Dague from then until February 1932. Across those years Edsall worked the China coast and the Yangtze through civil war and the fighting around Shanghai in 1932.
Anderson relieved Lieutenant William S. Veeder, who had held temporary command since 24 July 1937. His own command lasted until 30 September 1937, when Lieutenant Commander Frederick S. Conner took the ship. Those seven weeks covered the opening of the Japanese attack on Shanghai, which began on 13 August. Edsall remained an Asiatic Fleet destroyer on the duty she had long performed there, the protection of American lives and interests while a foreign war ran along the coast.
His later combat command was in a larger role. On 8 November 1943, then a captain, he commanded a task unit carrying reinforcements to the American positions at Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville, in the Solomon Islands. About a hundred Japanese torpedo planes and fighters attacked the formation in one coordinated strike. He disposed the ships so that their guns destroyed seven of the aircraft. The ship under his immediate command received only slight damage, and the reinforcements got through. For that action he was awarded the Silver Star.
Anderson retired as a rear admiral. Edsall stayed with the Asiatic Fleet after he left her. On 1 March 1942, with Lieutenant Joshua J. Nix in command, she was sunk south of Java by the Japanese battleships Hiei and Kirishima, the cruisers Chikuma and Tone, and aircraft from the carriers Hiryu, Soryu, and Kaga. Five men taken from the water by Chikuma were later put to death.