Ships
- USS Astoria (CL-90) Captain from 19 March 1946 · Relieved in November 1946
Frank Robinson Walker had Astoria (CL-90) from 19 March 1946 until November 1946, after the fighting was over. NavSource gives him no higher rank than captain. Hall of Valor and his Wikipedia page both say he retired as a rear admiral, in 1952.
Wikipedia and uboat.net agree that he was born in Florence, Alabama, on 11 July 1899. Wikipedia says he died on 25 December 1976 and gives no place. uboat.net gives the same day and adds Los Angeles, California. Hall of Valor prints the two dates and no place. Wikipedia says he met Doris Adele Carpenter through her brother-in-law Russell Groesbeck Sturges, a Naval Academy classmate, and married her on 13 December 1925. She was the daughter of Cyrus Clay Carpenter II. Their son, Franklin Robinson Walker Jr., was born in San Diego.
He entered the Naval Academy and graduated in 1922. Wikipedia says he served in various positions through the 1920s and 1930s and does not name the ships. uboat.net dates him a lieutenant commander from 1 December 1937.
uboat.net lists him in command of Patterson (DD-392) from 3 March 1941 to 13 September 1942, a lieutenant commander at the start. Wikipedia says that at Pearl Harbor he was one of the few captains to get his ship out of the harbor during the raid. Hall of Valor's Legion of Merit synopsis, from the Bureau of Naval Personnel Information Bulletin of July 1948, covers command of Patterson from 7 December 1941 to September 1942 and command of Destroyer Division 8 from May 1942 to March 1943. The two spans overlap, and the citation itself is marked as needed. uboat.net dates a commander's rank from 1 March 1942 and a temporary captain's rank from 21 June 1942.
Wikipedia says that early in 1942 he had Destroyer Division 8 in the Southwest Pacific, screened and scouted before the landings at Guadalcanal and Tulagi on 7 August 1942, and was in the Battle of Savo Island on the night of 8–9 August, when Japanese forces sank one Australian and three American cruisers. The Navy Cross, from the personnel bulletin of November 1944, is for the night of 6–7 October 1943 off Vella Lavella, as commander of Destroyer Squadron 4. The citation says enemy planes had found his three destroyers, that he closed nine enemy ships to 7,000 yards, fired torpedoes, and followed with gunfire, and that he kept directing the destroyer he was on after other ships of the squadron were badly damaged, until heavy damage forced his own ship to retire. It credits the squadron with sinking one or more Japanese ships, damaging three others, and frustrating an evacuation. Wikipedia's account of the same night says a Japanese force of nine destroyers and twelve other ships took off a 600-man garrison, and that he was afterward relieved of combat command and, the following year, made commander of Roosevelt Base and the Small Craft Training Center at San Pedro. The two accounts are both stated. The citation is the award text. The Wikipedia paragraph is not a second citation.
Wikipedia says he then had the attack transport La Grange (APA-124), which left San Diego on 1 January 1945 and took part in the Okinawa landings. On 13 August, at anchor in Buckner Bay, five kamikaze planes attacked her. The page says the gunners destroyed all but one, which hit the superstructure with a 500-pound bomb that exploded in the sick bay, and that the casualties were 21 dead and 89 wounded, with six more dying later.
In 1946 Wikipedia gives him Astoria (CL-90). NavSource's dates are 19 March 1946 to November 1946, with no day of relief. The page says he then went to the Ships' Organization Board and, the following year, to the Navy Department's Navy Regulation Board. He left the service in 1952. Wikipedia says he lived in retirement until his death in 1976. uboat.net's retirement year is 1952 and its death place is Los Angeles.