Ships
- USS Wilson (DD-408) Captain, 1 March 1944 – 26 March 1945
Colin Jack MacKenzie was born on 30 October 1910 in Wyoming. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1934 and was commissioned ensign on 31 May of that year. He became a lieutenant (junior grade) on 31 May 1937 and a lieutenant on 1 July 1941.
Wartime promotion carried him to lieutenant commander on 1 March 1943 and to commander on 1 February 1944. On 1 March 1944 he took command of the Benham-class destroyer Wilson (DD-408). The ship had been built at the Puget Sound Navy Yard and commissioned in July 1939 under Russell Groesbeck Sturges. Walter H. Price had her through the Guadalcanal fighting and the year that followed, and Charles Kenney Duncan commanded her for the carrier raids of late 1943 and early 1944. MacKenzie relieved Duncan as the Pacific fleet pressed toward the Marianas.
Through the rest of 1944 and into the spring of 1945 he kept Wilson in the western Pacific fighting. He took her in to bombard Kavieng. With the fast carrier task force he screened strikes against Saipan, Pagan, and Iwo Jima, including the June actions of the Marianas campaign and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Her guns were also turned on Guam, Rota, and Palau. For his command from March 1944 to March 1945 he received the Legion of Merit with the combat “V.” In that same span Wilson was credited with nine Japanese aircraft.
The destroyer left the forward area for overhaul late in the summer of 1944 and was back for the Philippine campaign in the autumn. From 27 December 1944 to 2 January 1945 MacKenzie escorted a resupply echelon from Leyte Gulf to Mangarin Bay on Mindoro. A Japanese suicide plane struck a merchant ship in the group and set her afire. He brought Wilson to the burning ship, directed the firefighting crews while ammunition exploded aboard the freighter, and stayed with the work under the threat of further air attack. The flames were put out, and the abandoned merchantman was made ready for salvage. He received the Navy Cross for that action.
In January 1945 he took Wilson into the Lingayen Gulf landings on Luzon. The destroyer furnished call fire for the troops ashore, escorted convoys, and patrolled waters where submarines were reported, while Japanese aircraft attacked the invasion shipping. He was relieved on 26 March 1945. Willis L. Roberts succeeded him in command. MacKenzie remained in the Navy after the war and retired as a captain. He died on 21 September 2003.