Ships
- USS Chevalier (DD-451) Captain from 20 July 1942
Ephraim Rankin McLean, Jr., a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy, became the first commanding officer of Chevalier on 20 July 1942, the day the destroyer was commissioned at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. She was a Fletcher-class ship, laid down on 30 April 1941 beside Strong and launched on 11 April 1942, with Mrs. G. DeC. Chevalier as sponsor. The name honored Godfrey DeCourcelles Chevalier, a naval aviator who in October 1922 had made the first landing on the carrier Langley.
McLean spent the first months working the new ship up and then taking her on convoy duty. Through late August and early September 1942, Chevalier exercised off Guantanamo Bay with the submarine R-12, often in company with Jenkins. From 3 October to 11 December she made three Atlantic escort voyages: a coastal run with tankers, a passage between Bermuda and Norfolk, and one of the early reinforcement convoys to North Africa. On the way back from Africa, between 29 November and 11 December, the oiler Chicopee refueled her at sea.
On 17 December 1942 Chevalier sailed from Norfolk for the South Pacific and reached Efate, in the New Hebrides, on 22 January 1943. On 27 January she sortied with Task Force 18 to screen transports bound for Guadalcanal. On 29 and 30 January that force came under heavy Japanese air attack in the Battle of Rennell Island, and Chevalier joined the antiaircraft fire around the formation. She then patrolled from Efate and, after 14 February, from Espiritu Santo.
In the New Georgia campaign she worked Kula Gulf with Destroyer Squadron 21, the water between New Georgia and Kolombangara. On 7 May 1943 McLean escorted three minelayers as they laid a field in Blackett Strait and Kula Gulf. The next night the Japanese destroyers Kuroshio, Oyashio, and Kagero entered the mines. The mines damaged them badly, and aircraft sank them afterward. From 11 to 14 May Chevalier helped bombard Vila and covered another minelaying operation in the gulf. Through the early summer she stayed on that duty, escorting convoys and shelling shore positions.
On 28 June 1943 Chevalier left Espiritu Santo with the covering force for the landings at Rice Anchorage, meant to block Japanese movement from Vila toward Munda. On the night of 4–5 July, in Kula Gulf, the destroyer Strong was torpedoed. McLean brought Chevalier alongside the sinking ship and held her there for more than seven minutes while men came across. Shore batteries fired on the destroyers, and O'Bannon stood by and answered them. About 247 of Strong's crew, some three quarters of her people, reached safety. McLean received the Navy Cross for pressing that rescue under fire. Chevalier was damaged in the night and spent much of the rest of July under repair.
George R. Wilson, who had been executive officer under McLean, commanded Chevalier in the action that sank her. On the night of 6–7 October 1943, Chevalier, O'Bannon, and Selfridge intercepted a larger Japanese force of destroyers and destroyer transports evacuating troops from Vella Lavella. A torpedo struck Chevalier on the port bow, tore the bow away back to the bridge, and left her unable to maneuver. O'Bannon, next astern, rammed her in the after engine room, flooded that space, and stopped the port shaft. As the crew prepared to abandon, Wilson ordered the torpedoes still in the tubes fired at the Japanese destroyer Yugumo, which was burning and blew up soon afterward. Before midnight the ship was given up. O'Bannon's boats took off the survivors, and on 7 October La Vallette sank the hulk with a torpedo. The severed bow, found about a mile to the west, was sunk with depth charges. Fifty-four men were killed and thirty-six wounded. After his command of Chevalier, McLean remained in the Navy and eventually rose to vice admiral.