Ships
- USS John D. Ford (DD-228) Captain, 10 December 1941 to 5 July 1942
Davis Wing Olney was a lieutenant in the United States Navy. He is dated as captain of the destroyer John D. Ford from 10 December 1941 to 5 July 1942. The ship, DD-228, was a Clemson-class flush-deck destroyer, laid down at Philadelphia in 1919, launched in 1920, and commissioned at the end of that year. In 1922 she sailed for the Asiatic Fleet and spent the years before the Pacific war on the China and Philippine stations.
The dates of his tour fall in the first days of the war in the Philippines. Ten December 1941 was the day Japanese aircraft bombed the navy yard at Cavite, where John D. Ford had been preparing for action with Destroyer Division 59. The captaincy of that winter has more than one telling. The dates followed here give the tour to Olney, in the rank of lieutenant, from 10 December 1941 through 5 July 1942. Jacob Elliott Cooper, a lieutenant commander, is still named in command at the outbreak in other accounts, and those accounts do not record a relief before the night of 24 January 1942. One of them carries Cooper through to 5 July 1942. The Cooper dates set beside Olney's end on 10 December 1941. The tour followed here is Olney's, and the captaincy stays unsettled beyond those dates.
On 24 January 1942 John D. Ford was Commander Paul H. Talbot's flagship at Balikpapan, on the east coast of Borneo. Talbot led four old destroyers into the Japanese transport anchorage after dark. Talbot was not her captain. Gunfire damaged her in the anchorage. She was not sunk. The transports lost that night are not credited to her.
John D. Ford stayed with the American destroyers in the Netherlands East Indies through the Java campaign. The stretch later named in the ship's Presidential Unit Citation, from 23 January to 2 March 1942, lies inside the dates given for Olney, and she was still afloat when that campaign ended. His dated command closed on 5 July 1942. Norman Ernest Smith is the officer next dated in command of John D. Ford, beginning that day.
The destroyer had a long war still ahead. John Sim Slaughter commanded her from the autumn of 1943 into May 1944, the season when she worked in the Atlantic with the hunter-killer group formed around the escort carrier Guadalcanal. Thomas Alexander Watkins had her on Atlantic convoy duty into June 1945, and Gilbert Ira Patterson was captain when she was decommissioned on 2 November 1945.