Ships
- USS Monssen (DD-798) Captain from 8 December 1944
Everett George Sanderson was born on 11 January 1914 and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in the class of 1937. He became a lieutenant (junior grade) on 3 June 1940, a lieutenant on 2 January 1942, and a lieutenant commander on 1 July 1943.
On 8 December 1944 he took command of the Fletcher-class destroyer Monssen (DD-798), relieving Charles Kniese Bergin. The ship had been commissioned at Staten Island on 14 February 1944 under Bernhardt Alois Feutsch, who remained in command until 21 July 1944. Before Sanderson came aboard, Monssen had screened fast carriers and supported the landings in the Marianas and the Palaus, and had fought in Leyte Gulf, including the night battle in Surigao Strait.
With Sanderson in command, Monssen went on to the next amphibious campaigns in the central Pacific. She furnished naval gunfire for the troops ashore at Iwo Jima and at Okinawa. Through the closing months of the war she joined the bombardment of targets in the Japanese home islands.
On 6 July 1945 the battleship Iowa refueled Monssen at sea, together with the destroyers Melvin, McGowan, and Rowe. Sanderson was still a lieutenant commander during that fueling. On 20 July 1945 he was advanced to the temporary rank of commander, the rank he held for the remainder of his time in the ship.
After the Japanese surrender, Monssen left the western Pacific for Pearl Harbor, continued to San Francisco, and was ordered on to San Diego to join the Pacific Reserve Fleet. Sanderson stayed as commanding officer until the destroyer was decommissioned on 30 April 1946.