Ships
- USS McNair (DD-679) Captain from 31 October 1945
Herbert Hamilton Ward was a lieutenant in the United States Navy who took command of the destroyer McNair (DD-679) on 31 October 1945. In naval usage he was the ship's captain from that date, even though his rank remained lieutenant.
McNair was a Fletcher-class destroyer built by Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company at Kearny, New Jersey. Her keel was laid on 30 June 1943, she was launched on 14 November 1943, and she was commissioned on 30 December 1943. She was named for Rear Admiral Frederick Vallette McNair, a Civil War officer who later served as superintendent of the Naval Academy. Her first commanding officer was Montgomery Lientz McCullough.
The ship left New York for the Pacific on 5 March 1944 and joined Destroyer Squadron 54. By mid-June she was screening the battleships that bombarded Japanese positions on Saipan. In July she fired in support of the landings on Tinian. In September she covered ground forces in the Palau Islands, and afterward she took part in the Leyte campaign. In the opening months of 1945 she worked in the fire-support and escort screen for the Lingayen Gulf and Iwo Jima operations, helped fight off kamikaze aircraft, and escorted the damaged carrier Saratoga away from the fighting so the carrier could be repaired.
Ward came aboard nearly two months after Japan's formal surrender. The western Pacific campaign that had filled McNair's first year and a half was over, and the Navy was thinning wartime crews and sending many destroyers toward occupation duty or inactivation. His recorded command of McNair began on 31 October 1945, at the head of a ship whose combat work had already been done by the officers and men who took her through the island campaigns.