Ships
- USS Nevada (BB-36) Captain from 28 October 1945 · Relieved when she was decommissioned, 29 August 1946
Cecil Clinton Adell was born in Topeka, Kansas, on 12 July 1900. He enlisted in the Navy at Seattle on 12 April 1917 and spent the First World War in the cruiser New Orleans on convoy duty across the Atlantic. Appointed a midshipman on 15 June 1918, he graduated from the Naval Academy on 2 June 1922 and was commissioned an ensign the next day.
His early assignments took him to the battleship Maryland, the collier Jason, the Naval Academy, and the naval hospital at Brooklyn. In 1924 he went to Pensacola for flight training. That March he was also sent back to Annapolis to prepare with the Olympic wrestling team. Illness cut the aviation course short. He resigned on 25 August 1924, and the resignation took effect on 30 September. He later returned to the Navy. He was a lieutenant by June 1929 and a lieutenant commander from 2 June 1938.
Wartime promotion came quickly. He was a temporary commander from 1 January 1942, a commander from 30 June 1942, and a temporary captain from 1 April 1943. From 10 May 1944 to 1 September 1945 he commanded the San Diego Shakedown Group of the Fleet Operational Training Command, Pacific. Under his direction, new ships ran through underway training so green crews could learn to steam and fight before they joined the fleet. The program covered more than 400 ships and over 182,000 officers and men. He received the Legion of Merit for that work.
On 28 October 1945, after the fighting had ended, Captain Adell took command of the battleship Nevada (BB-36). The ship already had a long war record. Commissioned in 1916 under William Sowden Sims, she had come through Pearl Harbor, been repaired, and later fired in support of the landings in Normandy, southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Adell had her for the last months of her commissioned life.
In the summer of 1946 Nevada went to Bikini Atoll as a target ship for Operation Crossroads. The crew left her for each of the two atomic detonations. She stayed afloat through both blasts, heavily damaged and contaminated, and was towed out of the lagoon. Adell remained in command until she was decommissioned on 29 August 1946, and he was relieved that day. In 1948 the hull was taken to sea and sunk in a gunnery exercise.
He next commanded the naval base at Key West, Florida. President Harry S. Truman used the base for working vacations, and Adell met him on arrival, including at Boca Chica in November 1948 and again in November 1949, when Bess and Margaret Truman came with the president. On 20 March 1951, during another presidential stay, he received a Navy Department safety award for the base's record. He retired in June 1952 as a rear admiral. Cecil Clinton Adell died in Red Bank, New Jersey, on 6 June 1984.