Ships
- USS William D. Porter (DD-579) Captain, 14 November 1943 – 10 June 1945
Charles Melville Keyes was born on 3 April 1910, with his home in Greeley, Colorado. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy and spent his career in the Navy. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 July 1939, to temporary lieutenant commander on 15 June 1942, and to temporary commander on 18 November 1942. He retired as a captain and died on 30 October 1979.
On 14 November 1943 he took command of the Fletcher-class destroyer William D. Porter, DD-579, relieving Wilfred Aves Walter. Consolidated Steel had built the ship at Orange, Texas, and the Navy had commissioned her on 6 July 1943. Keyes remained her captain until the day she was lost.
The destroyer was still in the Atlantic when he assumed command. Within days she called at Bermuda, then headed for the Pacific. She reached Pearl Harbor in January 1944 and soon went north. Through the late winter and spring she served with Task Force 94 in the Aleutians, shifting from island to island chiefly as an antisubmarine escort.
On 10 June 1944 William D. Porter stood out of Attu for the Kuril Islands, carrying the surface war up to the northern approaches of Japan. After those raids she moved south with the fleet into the Philippines campaign, screening amphibious ships and firing on shore targets when the landings called for it. By the spring of 1945 she was off Okinawa, where she took station as a radar picket and fighter-director ship, out ahead of the transports.
From 1 May to 10 June that picket duty was steady and dangerous. Suicide aircraft pressed the line, and Keyes handled the ship while her guns, under his direction, destroyed several of them. On the morning of 10 June, northwest of Okinawa, a single Aichi D3A dive bomber dropped out of the clouds and dove on William D. Porter. She turned clear, and the aircraft struck the water close alongside. The blast detonated under the keel, threw the ship upward, and broke her steam lines and electrical power. Fires took hold below. For about three hours the crew fought the flooding and the flames. Keyes stayed aboard and directed the evacuation. LCS-86 and LCS-122 came alongside and took the men off. William D. Porter then heeled to starboard and sank by the stern. Sixty-one men were wounded. The whole crew survived.
He received the Silver Star for that Okinawa tour, from 1 May through the loss of the ship: the fighter-director watch on the picket line, the gunfire against the suicide planes, and the evacuation he conducted after the blast. The Navy struck William D. Porter from the register on 11 July 1945. Her wartime service earned four battle stars.