Ships
- USS Nassau (CVE-16) Commanding officer from 20 August 1942 · Relieved on 16 September 1943
- USS Hornet (CV-12) Commanding officer from 9 August 1944 · Relieved on 1 August 1945
Austin Kelvin Doyle was born on 7 November 1898 in Port Richmond, on Staten Island, New York. While he was still young his family moved to Pensacola, Florida, the town that was becoming the cradle of naval aviation. He lived there about twenty years, and in the end he came back to Pensacola to die.
He entered the Naval Academy in September 1916, the start of more than forty years in the Navy. In the summer of 1918, as a midshipman, he served in the battleship Connecticut during the First World War. His class, nominally 1920, was hurried through by the war, and he graduated in June 1919. He then turned to the air and was designated a naval aviator in December 1922.
He spent the next years with carrier squadrons. In June 1938 he took command of Fighting Squadron Three in Saratoga, and in 1939 he became commander of the Saratoga Air Group, the whole flying force of one of the Navy's two big carriers.
In the war he built and led two ships. He was the first commanding officer of the escort carrier Nassau (CVE-16), from August 1942 to September 1943. Allied escort reports show her moving off the Australian coast in mid-1943, escorted by the destroyer HMAS Stuart, between Brisbane, Caloundra and Moreton Bay. A photograph from December 1942 shows Doyle with Admiral Halsey and Rear Admiral Charles P. Mason in his cabin aboard Nassau at Nouméa. For his Nassau service he received the Legion of Merit.
On 9 August 1944 he took command of the fast carrier Hornet (CV-12) and kept her until 1 August 1945. That year covered the climax of the carrier war, from the strikes ahead of the Philippine landings through the attacks on Formosa, Luzon, Okinawa and Japan itself. Under him Hornet fought with the Fast Carrier Task Force. He received two Navy Crosses as her captain; uboat.net lists the actions as August–October 1944 and February–May 1945. He also received a second Legion of Merit for the same command.
He was promoted to rear admiral in August 1945 and given Carrier Division 25. After the war he was Chief of Naval Reserve Training from July 1949 to August 1951, commanded Carrier Division 4 for a year, and in October 1952 took over the Tenth Naval District and the Caribbean Sea Frontier. He became vice admiral in May 1954 and ran Naval Air Training from June 1954. He was reassigned to Taiwan in March 1957 and in July 1957 relieved Vice Admiral Stuart H. Ingersoll as commander of the Taiwan Defense Command. He retired on 1 August 1958 and, because of his World War II combat awards, was advanced to full admiral on the retired list. He also held the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.
Doyle married Jamie Reese of Pensacola. They had three sons and a daughter, and five grandchildren. He also had a brother and a sister. In the 1960s Admiral Doyle Drive in New Iberia, Louisiana, was named for him. In his last years he was ill with several conditions. He died at the Pensacola Naval Air Station hospital on 12 July 1970 and was buried in Barrancas National Cemetery at Pensacola.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Austin K. Doyle."
uboat.net, Allied Warship Commanders: Austin Kelvin Doyle (USNA 1920; ranks; Navy Cross dates; HMAS Stuart reports of proceedings, June–July 1943).
Wikipedia, "USS Hornet (CV-12)" (operations, August 1944 – August 1945).
NavSource, CV-12 commanding officers; homeofheroes.com Navy Cross citations.