Ships
- USS Richard P. Leary (DD-664) Captain from 23 February 1944 · Relieved in November 1944
Frederic Shrom Habecker was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on 2 April 1905. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the Class of 1927. He was promoted to lieutenant on 30 June 1936 and to lieutenant commander on 8 December 1941.
In September 1942 he took command of the destroyer Mayo (DD-422). He was her commanding officer during the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943, and for that service he received the Legion of Merit.
On 23 February 1944 he became captain of the new destroyer Richard P. Leary (DD-664) when the ship was commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard. Her keel had been laid there on 4 July 1943, and she had been launched on 6 October 1943. Commander Habecker took her through shakedown off Bermuda, then through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor.
In July 1944 Richard P. Leary escorted ships to Eniwetok and Saipan. On 15 September she supported the landings at Peleliu. On 20 October she supported the landings at Leyte.
During the night of 24–25 October 1944, in the Battle of Surigao Strait, Habecker took Richard P. Leary into a night torpedo attack on a Japanese column of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. He held the ship on her approach under heavy gunfire, launched the attack, and brought her out undamaged. In the same fight the destroyer shot down one enemy aircraft and stood by the damaged Albert W. Grant (DD-649). He received the Navy Cross for his conduct that night.
On 1 November 1944, while patrolling off Leyte Gulf, Richard P. Leary rescued seventy survivors of the destroyer Abner Read. Habecker was relieved in November 1944 by Duncan Patterson Dixon, Jr. Herald Franklin Stout and Wayne William Watkins later commanded the ship.
Habecker was promoted to temporary captain on 20 March 1945. He retired from the Navy as a rear admiral. He died in Baltimore, Maryland, on 12 May 1981, and was buried in the United States Naval Academy Cemetery.