Ships
- USS Essex (CV-9) Captain from 7 August 1944 · Relieved on 30 June 1945
Carlos Wilhelm Wieber was born on 26 November 1894. He belonged to the Naval Academy class of 1918, which the Navy graduated in 1917 and sent to sea after the United States entered the First World War. He qualified as a naval aviator. He was promoted to commander on 23 June 1938 and to captain on 15 June 1942.
From 2 July 1941 to 21 April 1942 he commanded the seaplane tender Wright. In late November 1941 Wright carried a last reinforcement of men and supplies to Wake Island, continued on to Midway, and entered Pearl Harbor on 8 December, the day after the Japanese attack. Wieber kept the tender on transport work in the Pacific until he left her that April.
On 25 August 1942 he recommissioned Sangamon, a fleet oiler rebuilt as an auxiliary aircraft carrier. After shakedown she sailed in late October with the Northern Support Force for the invasion of North Africa. On 8 November, off Port Lyautey, her aircraft flew combat air patrol, hunted submarines, and supported the landings in Morocco. Sangamon then crossed to the Pacific and, by January 1943, was operating from the New Hebrides into the Solomons. Wieber left her on 5 April 1943. From 7 April to 16 April 1943 he held a short command of the fleet carrier Enterprise.
He became captain of Essex (CV-9) on 7 August 1944, relieving Ralph Andrew Ofstie. Donald Bradley Duncan had commissioned the ship on the last day of 1942. Wieber came aboard near the end of the Marianas campaign. In September Essex struck the Palau Islands and Mindanao and stayed to cover the landings on Peleliu. On 1 September, during the run south, he received King Neptune's court for the crew's line-crossing ceremony. On 2 October the carrier rode out a typhoon. Four days later she sailed with the fast carrier force, hit Okinawa on 10 October and Formosa from 12 to 14 October, and then covered the Leyte landings.
On 24 October 1944, over the Sibuyan Sea, Wieber directed Essex aircraft against the Japanese battleship Musashi. The heavy damage those planes inflicted, together with the blows landed by the carriers sailing with her, sank Musashi. The same day David McCampbell, commanding the air group flying from Essex, shot down nine enemy aircraft. Attacks continued on 25 October as the Japanese carrier force was engaged off Cape Engaño. Wieber received the Navy Cross for the 24 October action, and a Legion of Merit for his command of Essex from 26 August to 5 November 1944.
On 25 November a kamikaze struck the port edge of the flight deck near the forward elevator, among aircraft already fueled to launch. Fifteen men were killed and forty-four wounded. The ship was repaired quickly enough to support the Mindoro landings in mid-December. On 18 December she came through Typhoon Cobra and then searched for survivors. Still under Wieber, Essex joined the Lingayen Gulf operation, struck Formosa, the Sakishima Islands, Okinawa, and Luzon, and went into the South China Sea against Japanese shipping and against Formosa, the China coast, Hainan, and Hong Kong. In February 1945 her aircraft attacked the Tokyo area and supported the fighting on Iwo Jima. From 23 March to 28 May she was used chiefly in the Okinawa campaign. A second Legion of Merit covered his command from 26 January to 28 May 1945.
He turned Essex over to Roscoe Leroy Bowman on 30 June 1945. Laurence Oldham Mathews, Jr. commanded her later in 1945 and 1946, and John Roberts Strane had her in the months before she went into reserve. Wieber retired in 1949 and was advanced to rear admiral. He died on 29 September 1980 in Pensacola, Florida.