Ships
- USS Kimberly (DD-521) Captain, 22 May 1943 – 25 October 1944
Harry Smith, a commander in the United States Navy, took command of the new Fletcher-class destroyer Kimberly when she was commissioned on 22 May 1943. Bethlehem Steel had built her at Staten Island, New York, and sent her down the ways on 4 February 1943. The ship honored Rear Admiral Lewis Ashfield Kimberly, a Civil War officer, and the admiral’s daughter, Elsie S. Kimberly, sponsored her at the launching. Smith was her first commanding officer.
After commissioning, Kimberly worked through an intensive shakedown. On 10 September 1943 she left the Naval Operating Base at Norfolk, Virginia, for the Pacific in company with the carrier Bunker Hill and the destroyers Erben and Abbot. She reached Pearl Harbor on 3 October and spent more than a month in Hawaiian waters on training and maneuvers. On 20 November she arrived off Makin as American forces opened the Gilbert Islands campaign. Through that fighting she screened battleships and cruisers against submarines and used her guns in support of Marines ashore. On 6 December she left Tarawa for the West Coast and went into the yard at San Francisco for repairs.
With the yard work finished, Kimberly sailed from San Francisco on 22 January 1944 for the Aleutian Islands. Into September she operated from northern bases, patrolling for submarines, training, and joining surface raids and bombardments against Japanese shipping and shore positions in the Aleutians and the Kuril Islands. On 4 February 1944 she was with the task force that carried out the first bombardment of Paramushiro. Smith received the Commendation Ribbon for his conduct of the ship in that action.
The northern cruise ended with a return to the San Francisco area. On 6 October 1944 Kimberly left the Mare Island Navy Yard. On 25 October 1944, James Dickson Whitfield relieved Smith as commanding officer.
Smith’s seventeen months in Kimberly covered her fitting out, the passage into the Pacific war, the Gilberts landings, and the long northern patrols and bombardments of 1944. He turned over a destroyer freshly out of the yard and ready for the next phase of the campaign.