Ships
- USS Stanly (DD-478) Captain, 1944 – 25 March 1945
John Benjamin Morland was born on 15 July 1911 on a farm near Haven, Kansas, the son of George and Hattie Morland. He placed third in the Haven High School class of 1929 and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1934. Commissioned ensign on 31 May 1934, he became a lieutenant (junior grade) in 1937 and a lieutenant on 1 July 1941.
Early in the war he served in the Atlantic on the Wickes-class destroyer Badger (DD-126). From 9 August to 17 November 1942 he was her commanding officer. That November he reported to the new Fletcher-class destroyer Dyson (DD-572) as executive officer. Dyson belonged to Destroyer Squadron 23, the Little Beavers. In November 1943 he was aboard for the night actions off Empress Augusta Bay and Cape St. George, when the squadron broke up Japanese surface forces in the Solomon Islands. He was promoted to temporary lieutenant commander on 1 March 1943.
On 1 January 1944 Morland took command of Stanly (DD-478), another Fletcher-class destroyer of the same squadron. He relieved Robert William Cavenagh, who had commanded her through most of the Solomon Islands fighting. James Marshall Robinson had placed Stanly in commission in October 1942, and Ralph Jacob Baum had held a short interim command that December. Morland was promoted to temporary commander on 1 February 1944. The squadron's cited Solomon Islands service ran through 23 February 1944, and Stanly shared in the Presidential Unit Citation awarded for that campaign. Under his command the ship screened fast carriers off New Guinea, operated with the Seventh Fleet in the Philippines, including the Mindoro and Lingayen Gulf landings, and took part in the invasion of Iwo Jima.
He left Stanly on 25 March 1945, when Richard Shaw Harlan relieved him. In April he assumed command of the destroyer Charles S. Sperry (DD-697) and remained her commanding officer into the summer of 1946. With a carrier task force in the central Pacific, he was in command in May 1945 when Charles S. Sperry went to the aid of the carrier Bunker Hill after kamikaze hits. The destroyer later joined the occupation of Japan and entered Tokyo Bay at the end of August 1945.
After the war he was executive officer of the Fleet Sonar School at Key West from 1946 to 1948 and commanding officer of the Naval Ordnance Facility on Okinawa in 1949 and 1950. From June 1950 to December 1951 he directed military personnel distribution on the staff of the Twelfth Naval District. He served as executive officer of the heavy cruiser Quincy (CA-71) from December 1951 until July 1953 and was promoted to captain on 1 July 1953. His later duties included the Naval War College and the faculty of the Armed Forces Staff College at Norfolk, which he joined in June 1954. On 30 January 1957 he took command of the repair ship Amphion (AR-13).
His decorations included the Presidential Unit Citation for Solomon Islands service on Dyson and Stanly, three Bronze Star Medals with Combat V, the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for the assistance to Bunker Hill, a Navy Commendation with Combat V, and the Pacific campaign ribbon with nine stars.
Marietta Díaz Silveira and Helen Lawson were his wives in earlier years, and both died before him. In retirement he taught electronics, vocational subjects, and physics for four years at Gainesville High School and for six years at a community college in Ocala, Florida. He died in Gainesville on 9 November 2010, at the age of ninety-nine, survived by his wife MaryGrayce Cheves Morland and by his daughter Michele.