Ships
- USS Hunt (DD-674) Captain, 18 December 1943 – 31 March 1945
Halford A. Knoertzer was born in Deer Park, Washington, on 22 February 1911. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1932. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 August 1939, to temporary lieutenant commander on 15 June 1942, and to temporary commander on 18 November 1942. He later retired from the Navy as a captain.
His first wartime destroyer command was McCalla (DD-488), which he held from 12 April 1943 to 17 December 1943. The next day he became captain of Hunt (DD-674), a Fletcher-class destroyer built at Kearny, New Jersey, and commissioned on 22 September 1943 under Frank Paull Mitchell, Jr.. William Kittridge Rogers had the ship from 8 December until Knoertzer took her on 18 December 1943, during her passage from Norfolk toward Pearl Harbor.
Hunt entered Pearl Harbor on 24 December 1943 and joined the screen of Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's fast carrier force, working with carriers that included Essex, Intrepid, and Cabot. She sortied on 16 January 1944 for the Marshalls. On 29 January she guarded the carriers while their planes struck airfields on Roi in Kwajalein Atoll. The next day she joined the battleships North Carolina, South Dakota, and Alabama in shelling beach defenses on Roi and Namur, then returned to the carrier screen. She reached Majuro Lagoon on 5 February.
On 17 February 1944 Hunt screened Rear Admiral A. E. Montgomery's carrier group off Truk while the force destroyed Japanese shipping and aircraft in and around the lagoon. The damage helped push the Combined Fleet away from Truk. Detached with Enterprise, the cruiser San Diego, and five other destroyers, Hunt struck Jaluit on 20 February and returned to Majuro. In late March she screened the Bunker Hill group for the opening strikes on Peleliu. Gunfire from Hunt and the other escorts drove off three groups of Japanese torpedo planes. On 1 April she and Hickox left the formation and sank two patrol craft that had been firing on American aircraft. She then covered the Hollandia landings, joined a second strike on Truk at the end of April, and in May took part in a raid on Wake Island timed to draw attention from the Marianas.
Hunt sailed again with the Bunker Hill group on 6 June 1944. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June she stayed with the carriers through the long air fight in which Japan lost hundreds of aircraft and two carriers, then went west with the pursuit. On the return toward Saipan she recovered four pilots and seven crewmen from planes that could not get back aboard their carriers. She remained on screening duty while American forces took Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, and the fighting in those islands ended early in August.
After repairs at Pearl Harbor, Hunt left on 30 August 1944 in the screen of Admiral William F. Halsey's flagship, New Jersey. On 11 September Knoertzer's ship carried Halsey to the carrier Lexington for a conference and brought him back. At the end of the month she embarked the admiral and his staff at Kossol Passage, landed them at Peleliu, and lay offshore as standby flagship until he returned the next afternoon. On 10 October, during strikes toward Okinawa, Hunt rescued a Bunker Hill pilot and two crewmen. Two days later, in the attacks on Formosa, she saved another pilot and two crewmen. She screened the carriers through the Leyte landings on 20 October and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when those carriers went after the Japanese northern force, and she stayed with the fast carriers for the rest of 1944 as they struck Formosa and the Philippines.
In February 1945 Hunt covered a two-day strike on the Tokyo Bay area, then supported the landings on Iwo Jima. On 19 February her guns brought down a Japanese plane during the first air raid on the ships offshore. She left Iwo Jima on 22 February, struck Tokyo Bay again on 25 February, and hit Okinawa on 1 March on the way to Ulithi. On 14 March she sailed to meet the carrier Franklin off the Ryukyus. When a single Japanese plane bombed Franklin on 19 March and the resulting fires set off ammunition, bombs, and rockets, Hunt closed the burning ship and took 429 survivors from the water. She then joined three other destroyers patrolling around Franklin while the cruiser Pittsburgh towed the carrier to Ulithi, where the survivors went ashore on 24 March. Knoertzer was relieved as captain on 31 March 1945 by Fred Earle McEntire Jr..
For that stretch of carrier duty he received the Silver Star. The award, recommended in January 1945 by the commander of the Second Carrier Task Force, covered his command through the capture of Saipan, the First Battle of the Philippine Sea, the capture of Guam, the raids on Palau, Yap, and Ulithi in late July 1944, the September strikes on Mindanao, the Visayas, and Luzon, the October raids on the Nansei Shoto and Formosa, the Philippine support operations into late November, and the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea. The citation emphasized the gunfire protection Hunt gave the heavy ships against air attack on 12, 13, and 14 October 1944, and the rescue of twenty-two downed air crews.
Knoertzer next commanded the destroyer Henderson (DD-785), from 4 August 1945 until 11 October 1946. He retired as a captain and died in Kirkland, Washington, on 3 May 1986.