Ships
- USS Lamson (DD-367) Captain, 1 March 1944 – 1 May 1944
Lieutenant Commander Charles H. Pitts commanded the United States Navy destroyer Lamson from 1 March 1944 to 1 May 1944. Lamson, designated DD-367, was a Mahan-class destroyer built at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Her keel was laid on 20 March 1934, she was launched on 17 June 1936, and she was commissioned on 21 October 1936 with Hubert Esterly Paddock as her first commanding officer. She was named for Roswell Hawkes Lamson, a Civil War officer who had commanded ships in the sounds of North Carolina and at Fort Fisher.
After shakedown in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, Lamson sailed from Norfolk in June 1937 for the Pacific and spent the years before the war on the West Coast and at Pearl Harbor. Byron Hall Hanlon, Perley Earl Pendleton, and Preston Vigginius Mercer commanded her in succession through the late 1930s and into the war. On 7 December 1941 she was at sea returning from patrol. She was sent to search for the Japanese force that had struck Pearl Harbor, then patrolled off Hawaii and went to Johnston Island to take civilians off the island. In 1942 she moved into the South Pacific for escort and antisubmarine work. Walter Terry Jenkins served as officer in charge from 12 June to 23 June 1942, and Phillip Henry Fitzgerald then took command.
Under Fitzgerald, Lamson joined Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright's Task Force 67 for the night action off Guadalcanal on 30 November 1942 known as the Battle of Tassafaronga, in which Japanese torpedoes badly damaged the American cruiser line. She spent the next months on convoy and patrol duty in the South Pacific. In August 1943 she joined Destroyer Squadron 5 in New Guinea waters and spent the autumn and early winter bombarding beaches and covering landings, including Lae, Finschhafen, Arawe, and Cape Gloucester. Joseph Russell Rubins relieved Fitzgerald on 1 November 1943. On 2 January 1944 Lamson was one of the destroyers that shelled Saidor at dawn before the troops went ashore.
Pitts relieved Rubins on 1 March 1944, after that long stretch of bombardment and escort work. The Navy was withdrawing Lamson from the New Guinea fighting for an overhaul at Mare Island, California, where her antiaircraft battery was to be strengthened. His command lasted until 1 May 1944, when John Vavasour Noel relieved him. Later that month the ship was photographed off Mare Island in Measure 31 camouflage, Design 23D, with twin 40-millimeter mounts added just aft of the torpedo tubes. Noel saw her through the rest of the yard period and the training that followed at Pearl Harbor.
Noel took Lamson back to the western Pacific. She reached Eniwetok on 8 August 1944, patrolled and screened in the Marshall Islands, and in the autumn joined the Seventh Fleet for the Leyte campaign. On 7 December 1944, while supporting landings in Ormoc Bay, a kamikaze hit her superstructure and set her afire. Twenty-five men were killed and fifty-four wounded. Men who went over the side were picked up by the destroyer Flusser, and a tug helped fight the fire. After repairs she returned to the Pacific, took a turn at occupation duty in Japan, and came home to San Diego. Robert McCormick Ayer and then George Gill Ball commanded her in the months after Noel. In 1946 she was sent to Bikini Atoll for the Operation Crossroads tests, and the Able detonation in July sank her. She had earned five battle stars for her wartime service.