Ships
- USS Barton (DD-599) Captain from 29 May 1942
Douglas Harold Fox was born in Walled Lake, Michigan, on 26 March 1905. He attended Dowagiac High School in Dowagiac, Michigan, and entered the United States Naval Academy on 8 August 1922. He graduated on 3 June 1926 and was commissioned in the Navy. The next sixteen years took him through a succession of ships and shore stations. On 1 July 1940 he was promoted to lieutenant commander.
In the spring of 1942 the Navy sent him to the Bethlehem Steel yard at Quincy, Massachusetts, to stand by a new Benson-class destroyer. Barton (DD-599), named for Rear Admiral John Kennedy Barton, had been launched there on 31 January. Fox took command when she was commissioned on 29 May 1942. Through the early summer she shook down in New England waters, reported to the Atlantic Fleet at Newport, and made short coastal escort runs with the oiler Salinas and the new battleship Massachusetts.
Barton left the East Coast on 23 August 1942, crossed into the Pacific, and reached Tongatapu in the Tonga Islands on 14 September. In October she joined carrier operations in the Solomon Islands. On 5 October she screened the striking force in the raid against Buin, Faisi, and Tonolai. On 26 October she was in the screen of the carrier Hornet when Japanese aircraft attacked the American carriers north of the Santa Cruz Islands.
Fox handled Barton through that long bombardment. After Hornet was left dead in the water and had to be abandoned, he maneuvered the destroyer in and took off about 250 of the carrier's men. A few days later, working at night close to reefs off New Caledonia, he brought Barton in to recover crews and passengers from patrol planes that had come down, and got them clear without losing anyone in the rescue. For the seamanship and leadership of those days the Navy awarded him the Navy Cross. The decoration was conferred after his death.
On 12 November 1942 Barton arrived off Guadalcanal after escorting a supply convoy. That night she joined Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan's cruiser and destroyer force as it steamed up the Slot to meet a Japanese squadron heading for the island. In the early hours of 13 November, off Savo Island, the ships closed to very short range. Barton opened fire and launched four torpedoes, then had to stop suddenly to avoid a collision. While she was nearly dead in the water, two torpedoes struck her forward fireroom and forward engine room. She broke in two and sank within seconds, carrying most of her crew down with her. Forty-two survivors were later picked up by the cruiser Portland and by landing craft from Guadalcanal. Fox went down with Barton. He was thirty-seven.
A Gold Star, in lieu of a second Navy Cross, recognized his conduct as commanding officer in the night action that turned the Japanese force back from Guadalcanal. Barton's whole combat career was compressed into October and November 1942, and the ship received four battle stars for that service. In December 1944 the Navy commissioned a new destroyer, Douglas H. Fox, named in his honor.