Ships
- USS Franks (DD-554) Captain, 30 June 1944 – 2 April 1945
Commander David Richard Stephan was born in Washington, D.C., on 5 December 1910, the son of David Edgar Stephan and Alice Grace Clark Stephan. He entered the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1933. Classmates called him Dirk. He played basketball and lacrosse and served on the Reception Committee. The Navy commissioned him an ensign on 29 May 1934. He became a lieutenant (junior grade) on 29 May 1937, a lieutenant on 1 July 1941, and a temporary lieutenant commander on 1 October 1942. He was a commander by the time he led a destroyer in the western Pacific.
On 30 June 1944 Stephan took command of the Fletcher-class destroyer Franks (DD-554). He relieved Nicholas Adair Lidstone, who had been captain since the ship was commissioned at Seattle on 30 July 1943. Franks had already screened carriers for the Gilbert Islands landings. Under Stephan she joined the next stage of the drive across the Pacific.
His first operations in command were in the Marianas. From 12 July 1944 Franks bombarded Guam and also fired on Rota. A Japanese aircraft attacked the ship on 14 July. She stayed on station, and on 21 July she provided gunfire support as Marines landed on Guam. In September she took part in the Palau operation, arriving on 15 September, and on 23 September she covered the occupation of Ulithi.
On 1 October Franks began screening escort carriers off the Philippines. She covered the Leyte landings and was at sea during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In December she steamed with the fast carrier force for the invasion of Mindoro, and in January 1945 she helped bombard positions ahead of the landings on Luzon. That duty placed her with Task Force 38.
In mid-February Franks struck Japanese targets on 16 and 17 February ahead of the assault on Iwo Jima, then covered that landing. In March she worked the approaches to Okinawa. On 18 March her guns brought down a Japanese aircraft. She joined a battleship group for the shelling before the Okinawa landings, and on 1 April she served as plane guard for carriers covering the assault.
On 2 April 1945, in a heavy storm, Franks was moving from a plane-guard station near the carrier Yorktown back toward her place on the outer screen when she collided with the battleship New Jersey. The blow demolished the port bridge wing and the port-side guns and threw Stephan from the bridge to the deck below. He died of those injuries on 4 April 1945, at the age of 34. The crew buried him at sea with full military honors. Lieutenant Gerald Frederick Case served as acting commanding officer from that day. On 22 April Lieutenant Commander Eugene Baker Henry took command and kept it through the rest of the war. Franks received temporary repairs at Ulithi and then went to the Puget Sound Navy Yard for overhaul.
Stephan received the Bronze Star posthumously for his months in command. The citation recognized his handling of Franks in the bombardments of Guam and Rota, the Palau operation, and the capture of Ulithi, and his later work with the fast carriers in support of the Luzon landings, in strikes against Japan, and in covering the assault on Iwo Jima. His wife, Hazel, was listed as next of kin. He was also survived by his parents, by his sister Alice Elizabeth Stephan Joyce, and by his brother Edward Clark Stephan. A cenotaph in Washington recalls him. He was buried in the Pacific.