Ships
- USS Minneapolis (CA-36) Captain from 20 May 1944 · Relieved on 16 June 1945
Harry Browning Slocum was born on 18 January 1897 in Longmont, Colorado. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1919 and served through the years between the world wars. He was promoted to commander on 1 October 1938 and received a temporary appointment as captain on 17 June 1942. He later retired as a rear admiral and died on 29 December 1980.
On 20 May 1944 he took command of the heavy cruiser Minneapolis. The New Orleans-class ship had been commissioned in May 1934 with Gordon W. Haines as her first commanding officer. By the spring of 1944 she was a repaired veteran of the Pacific war, already back in action after heavy damage off Guadalcanal and a long stretch of carrier screening and island assaults. Slocum remained her commanding officer until he was relieved on 16 June 1945.
His first campaign in the ship was the assault on the Marianas. Minneapolis prepared at Majuro, then on 14 June 1944 bombarded Saipan ahead of the landings. When a Japanese fleet sortied to break up the invasion, the cruiser rejoined the fast carrier force and screened the carriers through the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June. In July and August she shifted to gunfire support for the capture of Guam.
In September 1944 Minneapolis supported the landings in the Palau Islands. The next month she entered Leyte Gulf with the forces covering the assault on Leyte. From 18 to 29 October the cruiser stayed in the gulf under repeated Japanese air attack, and Slocum fought her through the landings with her main and antiaircraft batteries in steady use.
In the early hours of 25 October, at Surigao Strait, Minneapolis took her place in the cruiser line on the flank of Rear Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf’s bombardment force. The American ships met a Japanese force coming up the strait and opened a heavy night gun action. Slocum’s conduct of the ship in that battle brought him the Navy Cross. The award recognized the part the attack played in removing a direct threat to the transports and other ships gathered in Leyte Gulf. For his leadership through the Leyte operation and the later landings at Lingayen Gulf, he also received the Legion of Merit with Combat V.
From 6 to 18 January 1945 Minneapolis worked in Lingayen Gulf during the landings on Luzon, again under air attack, while her guns supported the troops ashore. From 25 March to 12 April 1945 she operated off Okinawa. A Gold Star in lieu of a second Legion of Merit marked that stretch of his command. He was relieved on 16 June 1945.