Ships
- USS Burns (DD-588) Captain from 4 August 1945
Lieutenant Commander Heyden Forbes Wells served in the United States Navy in the last year of the Second World War. He commanded the destroyer Stevenson (DD-645) from 31 August 1944 until 22 July 1945. On 4 August 1945 he became captain of the Fletcher-class destroyer Burns (DD-588), relieving Jacob Thompson Bullen.
Burns was the second Navy ship named for Hugh Otway Burns, a North Carolina privateer in the War of 1812 who later sat in the state legislature and kept a coastal light. The Charleston Navy Yard launched her on 8 August 1942, and she was commissioned on 3 April 1943 under Donald Temple Eller. From October 1943 until July 1945, aside from a West Coast overhaul between February and April 1945, she served as an antisubmarine escort, a radar picket, a fighter-director ship, and an aircraft-rescue ship. That work carried her from the raid on Wake through the Gilberts and Marshalls, the Carolines, the Hollandia landings, the Marianas, and the Palaus. Eller had her from commissioning until late July 1944, and Bullen had her from then until the day Wells took command. The battle stars from those operations were already on her record.
Wells assumed command on 4 August 1945. Japan announced its surrender on 15 August, and the formal signing followed on 2 September. In the months after he became captain, Burns stayed in the Far East for occupation duty. She operated in the Yellow Sea in support of the occupation of Korea and the China coast, escorted shipping, and carried mail between Chinese and Korean ports. She was at Shanghai on 30 November 1945, and between trips she anchored at Tsingtao, Shanghai, and Jinsen.
Burns left the western Pacific on 29 December 1945 and reached San Francisco on 8 January 1946. After a short period on the West Coast she reported to the Nineteenth Fleet for inactivation and was decommissioned at San Diego on 25 June 1946, entering the Pacific Reserve Fleet. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 November 1972 and sunk as a target off San Clemente Island on 20 June 1974.