Ships
- USS Miller (DD-535) Captain, 15 August 1944 – 19 December 1945
Dwight Lyman Johnson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 16 August 1914, the youngest of twelve children. He entered the United States Naval Academy in 1933 and graduated with the Class of 1937.
From his commissioning he served in battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. He was an officer in the battleship Oklahoma when Japanese aircraft sank her at Pearl Harbor, and he came through the attack. In cruisers he fought at the Coral Sea, at Midway, and off the Komandorski Islands.
On 15 August 1944, as a lieutenant commander, he took command of the destroyer Miller. That October the ship screened a task group towing two badly damaged ships out of waters still within reach of Japanese aircraft. From 13 to 17 October, Miller recovered men, shifted personnel in hard wind and sea, and held her station in the screen under air attack. Johnson received the Silver Star for the passage.
On 19 March 1945, off the southern coast of Honshu, enemy aircraft set the carrier Franklin on fire. Johnson placed Miller alongside the burning ship in dense smoke, with explosions a constant danger, and took off the commander of his task group and other officers trapped on the flag bridge. He carried them to another carrier, then brought Miller back alongside Franklin repeatedly to lift off more of the crew and to help fight the fires. The Navy Cross followed. He was thirty years old.
He kept Miller through the close of the war and was promoted to commander on 20 July 1945. The destroyer had reached the Mare Island Navy Yard on 9 July and was still moored there when the fighting ended. His command ended on 19 December 1945, the day Miller was decommissioned and joined the reserve fleet at San Diego. In all, those months as commanding officer covered six major actions in the Western Pacific. He also received the Bronze Star and a unit commendation.
Johnson stayed in the Navy for a twenty-five-year career and retired in 1958 as a rear admiral. After the war he taught at the Naval Academy and spent three years on curriculum planning at the Naval War College. He died in Coronado, California, on 5 April 1987.