Ships
- USS Bache (DD-470) Captain from 14 November 1942
J. N. Opie, John Newton Opie III, was born on 23 May 1903 and rose through the United States Navy as a destroyer officer. He was a lieutenant commander by 8 September 1938. When the United States entered the Second World War, he was already at sea in the Atlantic, where German submarines were sinking merchant ships within reach of the American coast.
He commanded the destroyer Roe (DD-418) as a lieutenant commander from 16 October 1941 until 16 October 1942. In the first months of 1942 the ship recovered crews from vessels that U-boats had hit. On 18 January she took aboard 13 survivors of the tanker Allan Jackson, torpedoed by U-66 some 60 miles east-northeast of Diamond Shoals, North Carolina. On 30 January she rescued 31 men from the tanker Rochester, sunk by U-106 about 85 miles east of the Chesapeake Lightship. On 8 February she picked up 14 survivors of the British merchant Ocean Venture, lost to U-108 near Cape Hatteras. On 22 March she recovered 52 men from the British tanker Athelviscount, which U-202 had torpedoed and damaged roughly 600 miles east-southeast of Halifax. The next day most of that crew went back aboard the abandoned tanker, which was later towed in, and 19 men remained in Roe until she landed them at New York.
The Navy made him a temporary commander on 17 July 1942. His next command was a new Fletcher-class destroyer. Bache (DD-470) was built by Bethlehem Steel at Staten Island, launched on 7 July 1942 with Miss Louise Bache as sponsor, and commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 14 November 1942 with Commander Opie as commanding officer. She fitted out and then shook down in New England waters, working mainly from Casco Bay, Maine. Late that November he reported her ready for escort duty against U-boats.
Her first passage was with a westbound convoy. Bache joined the ships at sea late in December 1942 and shepherded them toward Halifax, Nova Scotia. On 8 January 1943 she picked up a contact that appeared to be a submarine and delivered three depth-charge attacks in a row. The ship reported a successful result. A later check against German loss records left the contact without a confirmed sinking. She brought the convoy into Halifax and returned to New York for post-shakedown repairs. Opie left Bache on 15 January 1943, while she was still on the Atlantic coast. On 1 June 1943 he was advanced to temporary captain. The Aleutian, New Guinea, Leyte, and Okinawa service that made the destroyer's wartime reputation came under the officers who succeeded him.