Ships
- USS Vireo (AM-52) Lieutenant, 18 March 1942 – 2 November 1942 · The end date is the next officer's start on the NavSource list · NavSource records the Navy Cross for 5 to 7 June 1942
James Claude Legg commanded the minesweeper Vireo, by then the ocean tug AT-144, when she took the damaged carrier Yorktown in tow at Midway and then picked up survivors after the Japanese submarine attack on 6 June 1942. Hall of Valor records his birth as 10 October 1890. The Navy Cross for those days was authorized by a board serial of 21 November 1946 and styles him a lieutenant commander, then a lieutenant. NavSource lists him as a lieutenant when he took command on 18 March 1942, and a photograph caption from about February 1947 calls him a lieutenant commander at the presentation of the Navy Cross at Mare Island.
The birth date is Hall of Valor's. The entry prints no place of birth, no parents, and no date of death. The dash after the birth date on that page is empty. No Navy register consulted for this account filled those gaps. He is not otherwise identified with an earlier Vireo captain of a different name.
No source used here gives an academy class, a date of commission, or any ship before Vireo. NavSource's commanding-officer list starts him, as Lieutenant James Claude Legg, United States Navy, on 18 March 1942, when he relieved Lieutenant Commander Frederick Joseph Ilsemann. NavSource gives no day on which he himself was relieved. The next officer, Lieutenant (junior grade) Charles Henry Stedman, is dated 2 November 1942. That next start is used here as the end of Legg's tour, and it is the NavSource sequence rather than a relief date Legg's own line prints.
He came to a ship that had already been through Pearl Harbor under Ilsemann. Vireo's report of that morning is Ilsemann's, not Legg's. By the time Legg had command, the ship's history places her in Hawaiian waters: local work from Hilo in April and May 1942, sometimes with the coastal minesweeper Crossbill, sweeping and listening for submarines. On 23 and 24 April, with Crossbill and the gunboat Sacramento, she searched off Pepeekeo Point near Hilo for an Army plane and found one body.
On 28 May, under secret orders, Vireo left Honolulu with the gasoline tanker Kaloli for Midway, making about nine knots. On 1 June, during the passage, she was reclassified an ocean-going tug, AT-144. They entered Midway harbor on 3 June and were sent to wait thirty miles off Pearl and Hermes Reef. On 4 June the carrier battle was fought. The ship's history says the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu were lost, and that Yorktown was left dead in the water and listing. Captain Elliot Buckmaster, as that history spells his name, ordered the carrier abandoned, then decided she might be saved. Vireo was called to tow.
She was there by 1135 on 5 June and had the towline passed by 1308. The tow went ahead at under three knots. Her rudder was small and her engines were light for a carrier. On 6 June the destroyer Hammann came alongside Yorktown to help the salvage party. Around 1400 the submarine I-168 hit Hammann and put two torpedoes into Yorktown. Hammann broke in two. Her depth charges exploded together as she sank. The shock wrenched Vireo. She cut the tow with an acetylene torch, took survivors aboard, and then lay alongside Yorktown where Hammann had been, while the carrier rolled against her. Yorktown sank shortly after dawn on 7 June.
The Navy Cross citation, Hall of Valor, Board Serial 4101 of 21 November 1946, tells the same days in the language of the award. It presents the cross to Lieutenant Commander James Claude Legg, then a lieutenant, as commanding officer of the minesweeper it spells VIERO and numbers AM-52, while she was salvaging Yorktown after an attack by enemy Japanese submarines, from 5 to 7 June 1942. The division line on the same page numbers her AM-53. The citation says he took her through submarine-infested water, sent a working party aboard Yorktown to connect a tow wire, worked for twenty-four hours to tow her clear, ordered the wire cut when a vessel on Yorktown's starboard side was torpedoed and sunk, rescued that ship's survivors, and then brought Vireo alongside the listing carrier to take off the commanding officer and the people still aboard. It does not name Hammann or I-168. The ship's history names both, and it names one submarine rather than submarines. The citation's "submarines" and the history's I-168 are both left as printed. The award authority is November 1946, after the war. The rank in the citation at that date is lieutenant commander. The rank at the action, in the citation's own brackets and on NavSource's command line, is lieutenant.
Vireo was not finished when Yorktown sank. The depth charges had jammed the rudder. On 8 June, entering Midway, she grounded on a coral head, lost her echo-ranging gear, and flooded the sound room. She grounded again trying to back off, and the yard tug YMT-12 towed her in after another strike that finished the rudder. The fleet tug Seminole then towed her to Pearl Harbor, where she arrived on 17 June. Emergency repairs ran from 18 to 30 June, and a full overhaul followed. She had turned in her minesweeping gear by 25 August. She did not stay at Midway as a station ship.
On 27 August she left with two barges, escorting the steamer Gulf Queen to Suva, then went to Noumea and began harbor work for the amphibious force. The crew made camouflage nets and painted her green. She reached Espiritu Santo on 8 October and on 12 October sailed to help supply Henderson Field. On 15 October she was one of six ships each towing a barge of gasoline and quarter-ton bombs. Japanese aircraft spotted them. All but Vireo and the destroyer Meredith turned back. The pair drove off two planes, learned that Japanese surface ships were near, and reversed course. At noon Meredith took off Vireo's crew and at 1215 stood off to sink the tug so she would not be captured. Twenty-seven planes from the carrier Zuikaku then sank Meredith. Vireo and the barges were not hit. Some of Meredith's survivors reached the drifting tug. A salvage party on 21 October found her without light, steam, or power. The destroyer Grayson towed her, and she reached Espiritu Santo on 23 October with Grayson and Gwin. The ship's history says most of her old crew were lost in that ordeal and that she went on with a new crew. It does not give a number, and none is added here. Legg's NavSource line has no end date of its own. If the sequence is right, Stedman relieved him on 2 November 1942, ten days after Vireo came in. Whether Legg was still aboard for the tow by Grayson is not stated in either source.
NavSource's photograph caption, dated about February 1947, shows him as a lieutenant commander with his wife at Mare Island after the Navy Cross presentation for his command of Vireo at Midway. The caption is the source for the place of the presentation and for his wife's presence. It does not give her name. NavSource also lists a Silver Star beside the Navy Cross. Hall of Valor prints the Navy Cross and does not print a Silver Star citation. No action, date, or ship for a Silver Star was found, and none is described here.
Nothing after the 1946 authorization and the 1947 presentation was found: no retirement date, no later ship, no date or place of death. The empty death field on the Hall of Valor page is not treated as a fact.