Ships
- USS Saufley (DD-465) Captain from 12 February 1945
Commander Francis William Silk, United States Navy, became captain of the destroyer Saufley (DD-465) on 12 February 1945. He relieved Dale Eugene Cochran, who had held the ship since December 1943, and he remained in command until 18 April 1946. Silk had been a lieutenant (junior grade) from 2 June 1941 and a temporary lieutenant commander from 1 March 1944.
Saufley was a Fletcher-class destroyer built by Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock at Kearny, New Jersey. She was launched on 19 July 1942 and commissioned on 29 August 1942 under Bert Franklin Brown. The ship honored Lieutenant Richard Caswell Saufley, a naval aviator who died in a flying accident in June 1916. By the time Silk came aboard she had already served from Guadalcanal through the Solomons and the Marianas and into the Philippines, and in January 1945 she had screened the landings in Lingayen Gulf.
Silk's fighting months fell in the last amphibious campaign of the southwest Pacific. From 14 to 28 February 1945 Saufley took part in the Mariveles-Corregidor operation, the assault that put American troops back on the island commanding the entrance to Manila Bay. From 10 to 18 March she supported the Mindanao landings. In April she was with the Sulu Archipelago landings, on hand for the assaults of 2 to 4 April and again from 9 to 11 April. From 26 June to 7 July she joined the Balikpapan operation on the southeast coast of Borneo.
After the surrender, Saufley turned to clearing mines along the China coast. She left Buckner Bay, Okinawa, on 7 September 1945, arrived off Shanghai on 9 September, and through the rest of that month worked in the Yangtze delta. On 9 November she sailed from the Shanghai area for Okinawa, reached Buckner Bay on 14 November, and on 16 November returned to Shanghai.
Silk kept the ship through the winter and into the spring. On 18 April 1946 Lieutenant Commander Richard Clough Smart relieved him. Saufley was decommissioned on 12 June 1946. Silk's tour had run about fourteen months, from the Corregidor assault through the minesweeping off China.