Ships
- USS Sterett (DD-407) Captain, 18 January 1943 – 14 January 1944
Frank Gardner Gould was born in DeLand, Florida, on 3 July 1907 and grew up in that St. Johns River town. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1931 and made his career in the Navy. He held the rank of lieutenant commander while in command at sea during the Pacific war, and he retired as a captain in 1960.
On 18 January 1943 he took command of the Benham-class destroyer Sterett at the Mare Island Navy Yard in California, relieving Jesse Grant Coward. The ship was in the yard to repair gunfire damage from the night action off Guadalcanal on 12–13 November 1942. Gould’s first job was to see those repairs finished and to take Sterett back to the South Pacific.
Sterett left Mare Island on 10 February 1943, joined the escort carrier Nassau at Pearl Harbor, and entered Espiritu Santo on 8 March. She went back to escorting supply convoys between the New Hebrides and the Solomons and to patrolling against Japanese reinforcement runs. On 7 April 1943, just north of the eastern end of Guadalcanal, Japanese dive bombers struck the ships in the area, and six men aboard Sterett were wounded.
The fight that marked his command came on the night of 6–7 August 1943 in Vella Gulf, between Vella Lavella and Kolombangara. Sterett was one of six American destroyers sent to intercept a Japanese destroyer group carrying troops toward Kolombangara. In a short night action the American ships sank three Japanese destroyers. Sterett came through without a hit and without loss of life. Lieutenant Commander Gould received the Navy Cross for the way he handled the ship that night.
He kept Sterett on escort and patrol duty in the Solomons through the remainder of 1943 as Allied forces worked up the island chain toward Rabaul. On 14 January 1944, with the destroyer in port at Pearl Harbor, he turned the command over to Francis Joseph Lucien Blouin.
After the war Gould stayed in the Navy until his retirement in 1960. He returned to DeLand, where he was known as Captain Frank, and he died there in May 2004 at the age of ninety-six.