Ships
- USS Eaton (DD-510) Captain, 27 March 1943 – 23 December 1944
Commander Fritz Gleim was born on 13 June 1903 in Orbisonia, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the United States Naval Academy class of 1927. He became a lieutenant on 30 June 1936 and a lieutenant commander on 1 July 1941.
He took command of the destroyer USS Eaton (DD-510) on 27 March 1943 and remained her captain until 23 December 1944. Eaton was a Fletcher-class ship built by Bath Iron Works at Bath, Maine. Her keel was laid on 17 March 1942, she was launched on 20 September 1942, and she was commissioned on 4 December 1942. She was named for William Eaton, the American soldier remembered for the march on Derna in the First Barbary War. Edward Louis Beck commanded her when she entered service.
Eaton was already bound for the Pacific when Gleim's tour began. She left Casco Bay, Maine, on 6 February 1943 and arrived at Efate, in the New Hebrides, on 7 March. She patrolled with Cruiser Division 12 between Efate and the Solomon Islands and escorted convoys from Espiritu Santo and Nouméa to Guadalcanal. From Port Purvis on Florida Island she supported the landings at Rendova, Vella Lavella, and Barakoma. In September she went back out with the cruisers into the Slot, the narrow channel inside the Solomons, on sweeps that destroyed a large number of Japanese barges.
On 1 October 1943 the Japanese submarine I-20 was sunk on the surface off Vella Lavella while Eaton was operating in those waters. After a trip to Auckland, the destroyer embarked Rear Admiral G. H. Fort and his staff on 26 October and served as flagship for the landing on Treasury Island the next day. During the night of 1–2 November, ahead of the assault on Empress Augusta Bay, she led the fast minelayers Tracy and Pruitt through Bougainville Strait to mine the eastern approach. On 13 November she screened the light cruiser Denver after that ship was damaged in the battle, and Dyson took over the duty the following day. In the weeks after that she escorted supply ships into Bougainville, Treasury, and Vella Lavella, shelled coastal batteries, and searched for Japanese vessels.
In 1944 the ship moved with the advance across the Central Pacific. Eaton took part in the landing on Green Island on 15 February and the landing on Emirau on 20 March. She sailed on 4 May for the Marshall Islands and reached Majuro on 7 May. From 29 May to 2 June she worked with Greiner and Sanders on a reconnaissance and bombardment of Kusaie, in the eastern Carolines. She left Kwajalein on 11 June for Saipan. When the assault opened on 15 June she provided gunfire support off Saipan and Tinian, including harassing fire and illumination after dark, and she took three Japanese airmen from a raft.
Gleim was relieved as captain on 23 December 1944 by Chesford Brown. Edward Frank Jackson was another of Eaton's wartime commanding officers, and James Louis May commanded the destroyer from the autumn of 1945 until she was decommissioned on 21 June 1946. Gleim received a temporary appointment as captain on 20 March 1945. He died in Washington, D.C., on 1 August 1978.