Ships
- USS Sigsbee (DD-502) Captain from 23 January 1943
Commander B. V. Russell, Benjamin van Meter Russell, was born on 10 May 1904 and was already a destroyer officer when the United States entered the war. On 23 January 1943 he became the first captain of Sigsbee (DD-502), a new Fletcher-class destroyer. The ship had been laid down at Kearny, New Jersey, on 22 July 1942, launched on 7 December 1942, and delivered on 22 January 1943. Russell, then a commander, took command at her commissioning the next day.
Her opening months were spent learning the ship. After fitting out, Russell took Sigsbee to Casco Bay, Maine, for ten days of gunnery and torpedo practice, then to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for shakedown, and back to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to set right what the cruise had exposed. In May 1943 she left Norfolk with the destroyers Guest and Earle to escort the carrier Lexington to Trinidad, arriving on 16 May. Detached on 8 June, she went on alone to New York and through late July shifted among New York, Casco Bay, and Norfolk.
On 22 July 1943 Sigsbee sailed from Norfolk with Harrison, Daly, and Lexington, passed the Panama Canal on 27 July, and reached Pearl Harbor on 9 August. On 1 August, during that passage, Russell was advanced to temporary captain. In mid-August he joined the carrier group of Yorktown, Essex, and Independence under Rear Admiral C. A. Pownall for the raid on Marcus Island, and during the strike Sigsbee fueled alongside Yorktown. The ships returned to Pearl Harbor on 8 September. She was off Wake Island soon afterward and joined the bombardment of that island on 5 October. On 21 October she left Pearl Harbor for Efate, in the New Hebrides.
Russell kept Sigsbee in the amphibious operations that followed. In November 1943 she screened the assault and fired on shore targets at Betio and Tarawa in the Gilberts. In January and February 1944 she supported the capture of Kwajalein in the Marshalls, and in March she took part in the bombardment of Kavieng on New Ireland. On 22 April 1944, for the landings at Hollandia and Aitape on New Guinea, he had her with the reinforcement group, escorting the transports and landing ships in company with the destroyer Dashiell. He gave up command of Sigsbee on 13 May 1944, after nearly sixteen months as her captain.
Before that command he had served in an older destroyer. As a lieutenant commander, a rank he held from 1 November 1940, Russell commanded Hatfield (DD-231) from 10 February 1941 until 28 December 1942, from the last months of peace through the first year of the war. He was a commander when he commissioned Sigsbee. His tour in the new ship ran from Atlantic working-up, through the move to Pearl Harbor, and into the carrier raids and landing operations of the central Pacific and New Guinea in 1943 and the spring of 1944.