Ships
- USS Braine (DD-630) Captain from 11 May 1943
Commander J. F. Newman, John F. Newman, Jr., of the United States Navy, was the first commanding officer of the Fletcher-class destroyer Braine (DD-630). He took her at commissioning on 11 May 1943 and remained her captain for one year, from fitting out on the Atlantic coast through the ship's first fighting in the central and southwest Pacific.
He came to the ship while she was still building. Her keel had been laid at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, on 12 October 1942, and she was launched on 7 March 1943. Newman reported to the yard as prospective commanding officer while the wardroom and crew were coming together. On the afternoon of 11 May 1943, at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, the captain of the yard turned the new destroyer over to him.
The Braine appointment followed two earlier destroyer commands. He had commanded Sands (DD-243) from 26 September 1939 until 21 April 1942, a tour that began in peacetime and continued into the first spring of the Pacific war. He then commanded Caldwell (DD-605) from 10 June 1942 until 22 February 1943. He had been a lieutenant commander from July 1940 and held the temporary rank of commander from August 1942, the grade in which he commissioned Braine.
In the summer of 1943 Braine left the east coast and escorted troop transports by way of San Francisco to Pearl Harbor. Late in September she sailed on her first combat assignment. Once at sea, Newman told the crew that the destroyer would screen a fast carrier force sent against Wake Island. On 5 and 6 October 1943 Braine took part in the strike and bombardment of Wake.
The ship then moved into the Solomons under his command. From 1 to 3 November 1943 she supported the opening landings at Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville, and for about two months afterward she escorted supply echelons back to that beachhead. On 15 February 1944 she covered the landing at Green Island. On the night of 24–25 February she entered Rabaul harbor under enemy fire and shelled shore installations. On 20 March she supported the landing on Emirau in the Bismarck Archipelago. After Emirau the destroyer settled into escort duty and into training pointed toward the Marianas campaign.
Newman left on the anniversary of the commissioning. On 11 May 1944, while Braine was in Australia, Commander William W. Fitts relieved him, and Newman went on to command a destroyer division. His year with the ship carried her from a Maine building yard through Wake, Bougainville, the night shoot at Rabaul, and the landings that pushed along the Bismarck barrier.