Ships
- USS Tern (AM-31) Lieutenant, 1 April 1943 – 20 January 1944
Herbert James Perry, Jr., a lieutenant in the United States Navy, commanded Tern from 1 April 1943 to 20 January 1944. NavSource gives the name with the suffix, the rank, and the dates. The 7 December 1941 action report commends an Ensign H. J. Perry, Naval Reserve, who had been in the Navy only a short time. The sources do not say that the ensign and this later captain were the same man. The designators differ, USNR and USN, and the later officer's name includes "Jr." They are not combined here. He is not Paul Kelly Perry or John Perry.
Birth, home, and family were not found for the lieutenant who took command in 1943.
No academy class and no earlier ship are on the NavSource line. He relieved Lieutenant Walton Barclay Pendleton, who had had Tern since June 1939.
Tern had reached Pearl Harbor from Bora Bora on 27 January 1943 and then gone to San Pedro, California, for overhaul. She was back at Pearl Harbor on 23 May 1943, during Perry's tour, and joined a service squadron of the Third Fleet in Hawaiian waters. For the next year her duties were recovering training torpedoes, towing targets, and assisting other ships. His tour ended on 20 January 1944, before the redesignation as an old ocean tug on 15 May 1944 and before the convoy to Eniwetok in July. The year's work the history describes therefore runs past him into the next command. It does not name him in any particular recovery or tow.
No later command or date of death was found.