Ships
- USS Mullany (DD-528) Captain from 23 April 1943
Baron Joseph Mullaney was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, on 13 August 1905. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1928 and began his career in the United States Navy. He was promoted to lieutenant on 3 June 1937. In 1942 he advanced to lieutenant commander, and on 1 October 1942 he received the temporary rank of commander.
He was in that rank when he became captain of USS Mullany (DD-528) on 23 April 1943. The Fletcher-class destroyer, built at the Bethlehem Steel plant in San Francisco, was commissioned the same day, and Mullaney was her first commanding officer. His welcome was brief. He told the sailors that he would have to learn how to get along with them, and he told the officers that they would have to learn how to get along with him.
Mullany trained off San Diego. On 28 May 1943 she relieved another destroyer as escort for the battleship Tennessee. Escort duty in the Aleutians followed, and in December 1943 she joined the Seventh Fleet in the Southwest Pacific.
Her first action came from 2 to 4 March 1944 at Seeadler Harbor in the Admiralty Islands, before the landing on Los Negros. Mullany covered the minesweepers clearing the approaches. When Japanese guns ashore opened fire, she answered with her five-inch battery, silenced the harbor defenses, and left the sweepers free to finish. For the next two days she fired in support of the troops on shore. Through the spring and summer she continued in the fighting around British and Dutch New Guinea and the Moluccas. The Legion of Merit recognized that command. He was relieved of Mullany on 19 September 1944.
On 13 January 1945 he took command of the destroyer Hugh W. Hadley (DD-774). She sailed from San Diego on 21 February, arrived at Pearl Harbor on 27 February, and left for Ulithi on 7 March. On 30 March 1945 he was promoted to the temporary rank of captain. By May the ship was on radar-picket duty off Okinawa.
On the morning of 11 May 1945 more than a hundred Japanese aircraft attacked the picket station. Mullaney fought the ship through successive waves of dive bombers and suicide planes, and her guns shot down nineteen of them. A bomb and three kamikazes struck. The destroyer caught fire, and three engineering spaces flooded. He kept the damage control in hand until Hugh W. Hadley could be towed to the anchorage at Ie Shima. The Navy Cross was awarded for that action. He left the ship on 19 June 1945.
After the war he commanded the oiler Monongahela and the attack transport Thomas Jefferson, and he led Destroyer Squadron 15 and Destroyer Division 112. His later duty included the fleet sonar base at Key West and service on the staffs of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired in August 1958 as a rear admiral. He died in San Rafael, California, on 16 January 1959.