Ships
- USS Shangri-La (CV-38) Captain from 15 September 1944 · Relieved on 16 July 1945
James Duke Barner was born on 21 May 1890 in Albion, Michigan. He entered the Navy as an enlisted sailor in 1907 and received his commission in 1918. In 1921 he was designated a naval aviator. That year at Hampton Roads, Virginia, he flew an observation seaplane 500 kilometers with a load of 1,102 pounds at an average speed of 136.023 miles an hour, a world record for seaplanes carrying that weight.
Early in the Pacific war he commanded the escort carrier Long Island, from 18 April 1942 to 1 February 1943, on duty in the South Pacific. He was advanced to temporary captain on 17 June 1942. From 8 July 1943 to 8 July 1944 he commanded the Naval Station at Astoria, Oregon, and the escort-carrier pre-commissioning detail stationed there. In that year the detail received fifty escort carriers of the CVE-55 class from the builders, fitted them out, commissioned them, and prepared them for fleet service. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for the work.
Barner went back to sea as the first commanding officer of the new carrier Shangri-La (CV-38). The ship was commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard on 15 September 1944 with him in command. She finished fitting out, shook down on a cruise to Trinidad, and returned to Norfolk on 21 December 1944. On 17 January 1945 she sailed from Hampton Roads with the large cruiser Guam and the destroyer Harry E. Hubbard, passed through the Panama Canal, and reached Pearl Harbor in February, where her deck was used to qualify carrier pilots.
He then took Shangri-La into a fast carrier task group in the western Pacific while the ship and her crew were still new to combat. From 24 April 1945 until 16 July her aircraft flew strikes in support of the campaign at Okinawa and attacked targets on Kyushu, Shikoku, Honshu, and Hokkaido. A Gold Star in lieu of a second Legion of Merit, with the combat V, recognized the way he kept a freshly commissioned carrier ready through that long run of offensive flying.
On 2 July 1945, still at sea off Japan, Barner spoke on the flight deck during the ceremony that swore in John L. Sullivan as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he held the assistant secretary's flag. Vice Admiral A. W. Fitch was present, and Vice Admiral John Sidney McCain stood with them. On 16 July 1945 Richard Francis Whitehead relieved Barner in command of Shangri-La.
Barner retired on 1 July 1949 as a rear admiral. He died on 15 February 1976 at Bethesda Naval Hospital, at the age of eighty-five, while living in Kensington, Maryland. His wife, Marie, and a son, Stockman Starr Barner of New York, survived him.