Ships
- USS Stanly (DD-478) Captain, 15 October 1942 – 2 December 1942
James Marshall Robinson was born in Washington, D.C., on 18 January 1904. He was promoted to lieutenant commander in the United States Navy on 1 July 1939, and he held that rank when the Navy placed a new destroyer in commission early in the Pacific war.
Stanly (DD-478) was a Fletcher-class destroyer built at the Charleston Navy Yard in South Carolina. Her keel was laid on 15 September 1941, and she went down the ways on 2 May 1942 with Mrs. Elizabeth Stanley Boss as sponsor. The ship carried the name of Rear Admiral Fabius Stanly. At completion she had a seaplane catapult in the place where other ships of the class carried a third 5-inch gun.
Robinson became captain of Stanly on 15 October 1942, the day she was commissioned, and he remained in command until 2 December 1942. The whole of that time was spent at Charleston. The crew fitted the ship out and put her through dock trials while the yard took off the catapult and prepared the space for another 5-inch gun. She was still alongside when his relief came aboard.
Ralph Jacob Baum took Stanly on 2 December 1942 and turned her over on 12 December to Robert William Cavenagh. Under Cavenagh she left the yard, passed Fort Sumter on 30 December, and began shakedown training off Cuba before going on to the Pacific. John Benjamin Morland commanded her from 1 January 1944, and Richard Shaw Harlan from 25 March 1945, through the last months of the war.
Robinson was advanced to the temporary rank of captain on 20 July 1943. His recorded wartime command was those six weeks in the autumn of 1942, when he brought Stanly into commission and saw her through the first stage of fitting out at Charleston.