Ships
- USS McNair (DD-679) Captain from 28 April 1945
Commander Bruce Percy Ross of the United States Navy became captain of the destroyer McNair on 28 April 1945. He took command in the western Pacific while the battle for Okinawa was still being fought and the fleet was preparing further strikes against Japan.
McNair (DD-679) was a Fletcher-class destroyer, built for screening, antisubmarine work, torpedo attack, and gunfire support. She carried the name of Rear Admiral Frederick Vallette McNair, a nineteenth-century officer who had commanded at sea and later served as superintendent of the Naval Academy. The ship had entered service at the end of 1943 and had already operated with the Pacific Fleet through the Central Pacific advance before Ross assumed command.
On 28 April the campaign around Okinawa still required destroyers on the screen and on outlying watch stations, guarding carriers, transports, and fire-support ships against aircraft and submarines. McNair remained with that effort as the fighting continued into June. In the early summer, fast carrier forces shifted their attacks toward airfields and coastal targets in the Japanese home islands, and fleet destroyers went with the carriers as escorts.
Officers of McNair’s wartime company included Montgomery Lientz McCullough and Herbert Hamilton Ward. Ross stood in that same ship’s service from 28 April 1945, responsible for her as the Pacific war entered its last months.
Japan’s surrender in mid-August 1945 ended the fighting that had occupied McNair through Okinawa and the summer carrier strikes. She finished the war as an active destroyer of the fleet. Commander Bruce Percy Ross was her captain from 28 April 1945.