Ships
- USS South Dakota (BB-57) Captain from 1 December 1945 · Relieved on 20 June 1946
Carlton Rice Todd came from Vicksburg, Mississippi, and entered the United States Navy with the Naval Academy class of 1921. More than two decades of service had brought him to the rank of captain by the end of 1945.
On 1 December 1945 he assumed command of the battleship South Dakota (BB-57), name ship of a class of fast battleships built for the Pacific war. Japan had surrendered in September, and the voyage home from the western Pacific was already behind her. His command belonged to the peace that followed.
The ship's fighting had been done under earlier captains. Thomas L. Gatch commanded her at the Battle of Santa Cruz in October 1942, in the screen of the carrier Enterprise, and again in the night battle off Guadalcanal on 14-15 November 1942. That night South Dakota took heavy shellfire and suffered a widespread electrical failure. The Japanese battleship Kirishima was sunk by Washington. South Dakota did not sink Kirishima.
Later captains took her back to the Pacific after repairs and kept her with the fast carrier forces through the central Pacific campaigns and the operations against Japan in 1945. She lay in Tokyo Bay for the surrender on 2 September 1945. Those actions were fought before Todd came aboard. He commanded South Dakota only after the war, and he fought no battle in her.
He had her from 1 December 1945 until 20 June 1946. She was still on the west coast when he took her, and she sailed for Philadelphia in January 1946 for the yard work that prepared her for reserve. The work was preservation and a reduced crew, the ordinary labor of laying up a capital ship whose sea war was over. South Dakota remained in commission after Todd left and was decommissioned at Philadelphia on 31 January 1947.