Ships
- USS John C. Butler (DE-339) Captain from 31 March 1944
- USS Evans (DD-552) Captain, 28 August 1945 – 7 November 1945
John Edward Pace was born on 3 December 1913 and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1937. He spent his career in the United States Navy. He became a lieutenant, junior grade, on 3 June 1940, a lieutenant on 2 January 1942, and a lieutenant commander on 1 July 1943. He held that rank through the commands he exercised in the Pacific war.
The fighting reached him early. He survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. In May 1942 he also survived the loss of the carrier Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea.
On 31 March 1944, at Orange, Texas, Lieutenant Commander Pace placed the new destroyer escort John C. Butler in commission. Consolidated Steel had built her there. He took her through shakedown in the Atlantic, including work off Bermuda, and sailed from Hampton Roads for the Pacific on 5 June 1944. She transited the Panama Canal and arrived at Pearl Harbor on 26 June. July went to convoy duty and training. On 9 August she left Hawaii screening transports for the landings in the Palau Islands, and that fall she remained with the escort-carrier groups in the Philippines campaign.
At dawn on 25 October 1944, off Samar, a Japanese force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers struck the small escort-carrier unit called Taffy 3. John C. Butler was one of the escorts in the screen. For more than two hours the carriers retired at their best speed under heavy gunfire. Pace turned John C. Butler toward the enemy column, conned her clear of a disabling hit, and launched torpedoes at short range. The attack drew Japanese fire off the carriers and onto his own ship. Several ships of Taffy 3 were sunk. John C. Butler survived, and the Japanese force eventually hauled away. Pace received the Navy Cross for that morning. The ship received the Presidential Unit Citation for the Battle off Samar.
He was still commanding officer of John C. Butler off Okinawa the next spring. On 20 May 1945 six suicide planes attacked the escort. Pace directed the guns, and three of the aircraft were shot down. The ship took only slight damage and stayed in the fight. He received the Silver Star for his conduct that day. His tour in John C. Butler had begun at her commissioning and carried her from the Atlantic, through the Philippines, to the waters off Okinawa.
His next ship was the destroyer Evans. He took command on 28 August 1945, in the days after Japan had agreed to stop fighting and before the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay, and he left her on 7 November 1945. Evans already held the Presidential Unit Citation and the Navy Unit Commendation, the only destroyer of the war to receive both. Those honors belonged to her earlier service, including the massed suicide attack off Okinawa on 11 May 1945, which was fought under the commanding officer who had the ship that day. Pace's own time in Evans was a short postwar command.
Pace remained in the Navy and retired as a captain. As a captain he served with the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, under the Director of Defense Research and Engineering in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, from 6 August 1964 to 1 November 1965. A Gold Star in lieu of a second Legion of Merit recognized that duty.