Ships
- USS Nevada (BB-36) Captain from 23 June 1936 · Relieved on 2 October 1937
Claude Banks Mayo was a captain in the United States Navy. He commanded the battleship Nevada from 23 June 1936 until he was relieved on 2 October 1937. He followed Robert L. Ghormley in that billet and turned the ship over to Robert A. Theobald. For a little more than fifteen months he was responsible for a capital ship of the Pacific Fleet, already twenty years in service and rebuilt for further duty.
Before the battleship, he commanded the destroyer Dickerson, taking her on 15 November 1920 after Frederick V. McNair, Jr. Dickerson was a flush-deck destroyer completed just after the First World War. The appointment placed him in the seagoing work of the early 1920s, when destroyer officers spent their time on drills, upkeep, and short cruises in a fleet being cut back after the war.
Nevada already had a name of her own when Mayo came aboard. She had entered service in 1916 as the Navy’s first oil-fired battleship, with a triple-gun turret and armor concentrated over the magazines and machinery. Her first commanding officer, William Sowden Sims, put his mark on the new ship. In 1918 she joined the American battleships sent to serve with the British Grand Fleet and helped cover the passage of troops to Europe. The treaties of the next decade kept her on the list when many older battleships were discarded, and a long modernization followed.
Clarence Selby Kempff commanded her as she went into Norfolk Navy Yard in 1927, and Hilary Herbert Royall had her through much of the yard period that lasted into 1930. Cage masts gave way to tripods. Geared turbines taken from North Dakota replaced her original engines. Her 14-inch guns were altered so they could elevate to 30 degrees and fire much farther. Bulges were added against torpedoes, the five-inch battery was rearranged, anti-aircraft guns were fitted, and catapults were installed for spotting planes. She then served with the Pacific Fleet. Mayo took over that rebuilt ship.
From the summer of 1936 through the autumn of 1937, Nevada under Mayo kept to the Battle Force pattern of gunnery, fleet exercises, and time on the California coast. The battleships’ home port was still on the West Coast. On 2 October 1937 he was relieved, and the ship continued under other captains. On 7 December 1941 that same Nevada was the only battleship to get underway during the attack at Pearl Harbor. She was later raised, repaired, and sent back to war in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Mayo retired from the Navy as a captain. On 1 July 1940 he became superintendent of the California Maritime Academy, and he stayed until 31 October 1947. At the start of his tenure the superintendent was also master of the academy’s training ship. During the Second World War those duties were divided, and in July 1946 the officer afloat was titled commanding officer. While he was superintendent the school moved to Morrow Cove in Vallejo, California, and acquired the training ship Golden Bear.