Ships
- USS Wedderburn (DD-684) Captain, 10 August 1944 – 5 May 1945
Commander Charles Hansford Kendall of the United States Navy was commanding officer of the destroyer Wedderburn (DD-684) from 10 August 1944 to 5 May 1945. Wedderburn was a Fletcher-class ship, commissioned in March 1944 and already preparing for Pacific Fleet duty when he took her. He held the rank of commander while serving as her captain.
In that billet he was responsible for a crew of about three hundred and for a ship whose daily work was to stay with the fast carriers. The duty was station-keeping in large formations, antiaircraft defense, and antisubmarine screening, often in darkness and at speed, across the Philippine Sea and on toward the Volcano Islands and the Ryukyus.
From late summer 1944 through the autumn, Wedderburn screened carriers that struck Japanese positions ahead of the landings on Leyte in October. She refueled underway, stood ready to pick up aircrew who came down near the formation, and went to general quarters when enemy aircraft approached. Her part in those weeks was the close protection of the carriers that covered the landings.
The same screening work carried the ship through the winter raids toward Luzon and the South China Sea, then to the waters off Iwo Jima in February 1945. In April the fleet closed Okinawa, where Japanese aircraft, including suicide planes, pressed attacks on the carrier groups and on the destroyers around them. Kendall remained in command of Wedderburn through the first weeks of that campaign. His tour ended on 5 May 1945, with the fighting for Okinawa still underway.
Officers of Wedderburn in those wartime years included John Lester Wilfong and Robert William Clark. Kendall's command covered the central stretch of her Pacific combat service, from the approach to the Philippines through Iwo Jima and the opening phase off Okinawa. The destroyer remained in the war after he left her.