Ships
- USS McCawley (AP-10) In command, 7 August 1942
Charlie P. McFeaters was born on 6 September 1891 in Scottdale, Pennsylvania, and his home was Greensburg. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1913 and remained a career officer. During the Second World War he served as a captain. He later retired as a rear admiral and died on 16 February 1947.
He assumed command of the transport McCawley (AP-10) on 7 January 1941. The ship had been the Grace Line steamer Santa Barbara, completed in England in 1928, purchased by the Navy in July 1940, and commissioned that September under another captain. In February 1942 McCawley carried troops to Iceland and returned to New York late in March. She passed through the Panama Canal in April, put Marine aviators ashore at Pago Pago on 8 May, and went on to Wellington, New Zealand, to join the Amphibious Force, South Pacific.
McCawley was the flagship of Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner for the landing that opened the Guadalcanal campaign, the first Allied amphibious counteroffensive of the Pacific war. McFeaters was the ship's commanding officer while Turner ran the operation from her decks. On 7 August 1942 Marines went ashore at Tulagi at 0800 and at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal at 0919. Japanese aircraft attacked the transport group the next day, and McCawley's guns were credited with three aircraft destroyed and a possible fourth. On the night of 8–9 August the ship remained offshore and the crew saw the flares of the battle off Savo Island, in which the cruisers Canberra, Astoria, Vincennes, and Quincy were lost and Chicago was badly damaged. The transports withdrew on 9 August.
McFeaters received the Navy Cross for his leadership on 7, 8, and 9 August 1942. As commanding officer he took McCawley into the landing with troops and supplies while the ships were under aerial bombing, torpedo attacks, and fire from Japanese shore batteries, got the cargo ashore, and brought the transport back to port intact.
He kept the ship on the Guadalcanal supply line through the rest of his command. On 18 September McCawley landed more men and supplies and sailed the same day with wounded men and Japanese prisoners, bound for Noumea. In October she left again in a convoy carrying more than 2,800 reinforcements. On the night of 11–12 October a cruiser force fought off Cape Esperance in support of that movement, and on 13 October McCawley unloaded off Lunga Point between air raids. The transports then embarked the 1st Raider Battalion and cleared Sealark Channel before dark. In November she returned with another reinforcement group. By dusk on 12 November about nine-tenths of the transports' cargo was ashore despite torpedo-plane attacks, and the ships were ordered back to Espiritu Santo as a large night action began offshore.
On 24 November 1942 McFeaters was relieved by Captain Robert H. Rodgers, and McCawley sailed from Noumea for an overhaul at Wellington. The ship was redesignated an attack transport, APA-4, in February 1943. On 30 June 1943, as flagship for the Rendova landing at the start of the New Georgia operation, she was hit by a Japanese aerial torpedo and left in a sinking condition. After the crew had abandoned her, United States motor torpedo boats mistook the ship for an enemy vessel and sank her with more torpedoes. McFeaters had given up command seven months earlier.