Ships
- USS Eaton (DD-510) Captain, 3 September 1943 – 27 March 1944
Edward Frank Jackson was born in Massachusetts on 29 July 1910. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1933 and was a lieutenant by 1 April 1941. On 1 October 1942 he was made a temporary lieutenant commander, the rank he held when he took a destroyer in the South Pacific. On 1 January 1944, still in that command, he was advanced to temporary commander. He died on 21 August 1970.
Jackson became commanding officer of Eaton on 3 September 1943, relieving Edward Louis Beck. The Fletcher-class destroyer had been launched at Bath Iron Works in Maine on 20 September 1942 and commissioned on 4 December 1942. When Jackson assumed command she was already in the Solomon Islands, screening cruiser forces and moving among the forward anchorages of the South Pacific.
In September Eaton worked with Cruiser Division 12 on sweeps through New Georgia Sound, the narrow passage known as the Slot, and sank a number of Japanese barges. On 1 October 1943, off Vella Lavella, the ship found a Japanese submarine on the surface. Jackson took Eaton onto a parallel course, lit the boat with star shells and tracer fire, and put several salvos into her in rapid succession. The submarine capsized and sank within about three minutes. Naval records identify her as I-20, lost near 7°40' south, 157°10' east. For his conduct as commanding officer of a destroyer in the Solomons, Jackson received the Legion of Merit.
Later that month Eaton made a fast trip to Auckland. On 26 October she embarked Rear Admiral G. H. Fort and his staff and served as flagship for the landing on Treasury Island the next day. On the night of 1–2 November, before the landings at Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville, Jackson led the fast minelayers Tracy and Pruitt through Bougainville Strait to close the eastern approach.
In 1944 Eaton took part in the landing on Green Island on 15 February and the landing on Emirau on 20 March. Jackson left the ship on 27 March 1944, when Fritz Gleim took command. Eaton remained in the Pacific under later commanding officers, including Chesford Brown and James Louis May. Jackson's Legion of Merit was announced in June 1944.