Ships
- USS Foote (DD-511) Captain from 13 April 1945
Harry William McElwain was a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. On 13 April 1945 he became captain of the destroyer Foote, a ship that already had more than two years of commissioned service and a hard record in the Pacific.
Foote (DD-511) was a Fletcher-class destroyer, the type that carried much of the Navy’s escort and screening work during the war. Built at the Bethlehem Steel yard on Staten Island, New York, she went into commission on 22 December 1942. Bernard L. Austin was her first commanding officer. She was named for Rear Admiral Andrew Hull Foote, who had led Union gunboats on the western rivers in the Civil War. Alston Ramsay was another of the officers who served in her.
In 1943 Foote operated in the Solomon Islands, escorting transports and covering landings as the campaign moved up the island chain. On the night of 1–2 November 1943, during the Bougainville operation, she was with the covering force in the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay when a Japanese torpedo struck her. The blast tore away much of the stern and left members of the crew dead and wounded. She stayed afloat. After temporary repairs in the South Pacific she crossed to a West Coast yard for a long rebuild, then returned to the fleet.
McElwain took command on 13 April 1945. The landings on Okinawa had opened on the first of that month, and American carrier forces were striking closer to Japan. For a fleet destroyer in the western Pacific that spring, the work was screening heavier ships, escorting convoys, answering calls for gunfire, and meeting aircraft that attacked low and fast. That was the war he entered when he assumed command of Foote.
Japan surrendered in August 1945. McElwain’s command had begun on 13 April of that year, during the last campaign season of the Pacific war, while the fleet was still fully engaged. The destroyer he captained was a repaired survivor of the Solomons, sent back to sea in time for the final drive of the conflict.