Ships
- USS John D. Henley (DD-553) Captain, 2 February 1944 – 30 June 1945
Commander Charles Hughes Smith, Naval Academy class of 1932, was the first captain of the Fletcher-class destroyer John D. Henley (DD-553). Gulf Shipbuilding at Chickasaw, Alabama, had laid the hull down in July 1941 and launched her in November 1942. Miss Shelah Keith Kane, a descendant of Captain John D. Henley, the early-nineteenth-century officer for whom the ship was named, sponsored the launch. Smith took command when the destroyer was commissioned on 2 February 1944 and remained her captain until 30 June 1945.
The opening weeks went to fitting out and to working the crew up. Smith ran shakedown training in Bermuda waters and brought John D. Henley into Norfolk on 28 March 1944. He then took her through the Panama Canal into the Pacific. She reached Pearl Harbor on 23 April. After a short stretch of operational training, the destroyer escorted fleet oilers out to Majuro and was back at Pearl Harbor on 17 May. She sailed again on 27 May, and at Majuro she became flagship of a refueling task group.
That group left on 6 June 1944 and moved into the Marianas to fuel the fleet while American forces took Saipan and Tinian. Japanese aircraft attacked the oilers and their screen on 17 and 18 June. The ships stayed at sea through a long replenishment period and returned to Eniwetok on 14 August. As the offensive turned toward the Palaus, John D. Henley joined Task Group 30.8 and left Manus on 1 September, once more as flagship of the refueling group, for the strikes on Peleliu and the capture of the island. Through November the oilers and escorts worked from Ulithi, keeping the fast carriers fueled for their raids on the Philippines. Captain J. T. Acuff directed that replenishment unit.
Smith kept the destroyer with the fleet train as the campaign moved on. In December 1944 John D. Henley screened oilers supporting the landings on Mindoro, and in January 1945 she stayed with the logistics ships for the advance into Lingayen Gulf. On 30 January she met the submarine Kete at sea and escorted her into Guam at the end of Kete’s first war patrol. In February the destroyer was with the force covering the assault on Iwo Jima. In the spring she went forward for the Okinawa campaign, screening oilers and closing the island for a period of shore bombardment before returning to the replenishment screen. That duty carried the ship through June 1945.
On 30 June 1945 Smith turned John D. Henley over to Simon Everett Ramey. In the seventeen months of his command the destroyer had gone from a new ship in the Gulf of Mexico to a regular escort in the Pacific fueling force, and she received six battle stars for her wartime service. Ramey commanded her through the surrender and the voyage home. The ship was decommissioned on 30 April 1946, later laid up on the West Coast, and sold for scrap in May 1970.