Ships
- USS Cowell (DD-547) Captain from 23 August 1943
Commander C. W. Parker brought the destroyer Cowell into service. On 23 August 1943, at San Pedro, California, he placed the new ship in commission and became her first commanding officer. Navy photographs made on a later visit give his name as Charles W. Parker and show that he retired as a rear admiral.
Cowell was a Fletcher-class destroyer from the Bethlehem Steel yard at San Pedro. She had been launched on 18 March 1943, with Mrs. R. Hepburn as sponsor. Her name honored John G. Cowell, a Navy officer of the War of 1812 who lost a leg off Valparaíso when the frigate Essex fought the British ships Phoebe and Cherub. Cowell stayed on deck through the rest of that action and died of his wounds on 18 April 1814. The destroyer that carried his name was built to run with the fast carriers, with five 5-inch guns and ten torpedo tubes.
Parker used the late summer and early fall of 1943 to work the crew through shakedown and final fitting out. On 28 October Cowell sailed from San Pedro. She reached Pearl Harbor on 2 November and joined the fast carrier force then assembling for the drive across the Central Pacific.
Screening those carriers was her first combat work. From 10 November to 13 December 1943 she guarded them while their aircraft supported the landings in the Gilbert Islands. Around the new year she left Espiritu Santo for strikes on Kavieng and New Ireland, and late in January the same circuit hit Kwajalein, Ebeye, and Eniwetok. On 16 and 17 February 1944 she was with the force that struck Truk, then returned to Pearl Harbor to replenish.
The ship he had taken out to the fleet kept that pace through the spring. Back at Majuro on 22 March, she sailed with the carriers for blows against Palau, Yap, and Ulithi from 30 March to 1 April, for the Hollandia landings of 21 to 23 April, and for raids on Truk, Satawan, and Ponape from 29 April to 1 May. In the second half of May the carriers struck Marcus and Wake. During the Marianas operation in June she remained in the screen, and on 19 and 20 June she helped cover the carriers with antiaircraft fire in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Years afterward Parker held flag rank. On 23 August 1968, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the commissioning, retired Rear Admiral Charles W. Parker came back aboard Cowell with his wife and was received by her commanding officer, Commander Alvin Brand.