Ships
- USS Pensacola (CA-24) Captain, 10 June 1933 – 12 April 1935
Herbert Harlan Michael entered the United States Navy with the Naval Academy class of 1904, the same class as David Worth Bagley. His service ran from the Navy’s early destroyers through the First World War and on to command of a heavy cruiser in the Pacific.
On 23 July 1908 he took command of the destroyer Dale. He stayed in that billet until 4 April 1910, when Frank J. Fletcher relieved him. Dale was one of the Navy’s first destroyers, and the tour was the practical schooling of a junior officer learning to handle a small, fast ship at sea.
In the First World War he served as a commander in command of the destroyer Conyngham. The Navy awarded him the Navy Cross for that command. He had the ship on patrol in waters where submarines and mines were a standing danger, escorted convoys of troops and supplies through those waters, and kept up both offensive and defensive action against enemy forces at sea.
After the Armistice he was ordered to a destroyer still fitting out. On 29 January 1919 he became commanding officer of Meredith on the day she went into commission, and he took the new ship through her first days in service.
He assumed command of the heavy cruiser Pensacola on 10 June 1933 and left her on 12 April 1935. Pensacola was the name ship of a class armed with eight-inch guns and built under the limits of the Washington treaty. In those years she served with the United States Fleet in the Pacific, and the work of the cruise was peacetime duty: gunnery, fleet exercises, and the long passages that kept a cruiser ready for war. Michael retired as a captain.