Pacific ships

USN · Lieutenant Commander

Wicks, John Edward

All captains
JW

Ships

John Edward Wicks, Jr., was a United States Navy officer who commanded two destroyers at the close of the Pacific war. He was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, on 29 April 1914, and he graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis with the class of 1938. He became a lieutenant (junior grade) on 2 June 1941. On 1 March 1944 he was promoted to temporary lieutenant commander, the rank he held when he received both of his wartime commands. He finished his career as a captain.

On 14 August 1944 Wicks took command of Russell (DD-414), relieving Lewis Robinson Miller. The ship was a Sims-class destroyer, laid down at Newport News in December 1937, launched on 8 December 1938, and commissioned on 3 November 1939. James Carter Pollock had been her first commanding officer. Glenn Roy Hartwig, Warren Howard McClain, and Frederick Evans Moore commanded her in turn before Miller. By the time Wicks came aboard she was a veteran of the Pacific war, and he would keep her through the last year of fighting and the first weeks of peace.

His cruise opened in the Philippines. During the Leyte operation Russell stayed in San Pedro Bay until 24 October 1944, resumed patrol in Leyte Gulf on 25 October, and sailed for New Guinea the next day. In November and December she escorted reinforcement convoys from New Guinea back to Leyte. On 28 December she left Aitape with the force headed for Luzon. She entered the Mindoro Strait on 5 January 1945. Aircraft, small boats, and Japanese ships harassed the formation on the way north.

The hardest surface fight of his command came on the night of 7 January 1945. Russell was one of the destroyers posted about five miles to starboard of the San Fabian Attack Force, set there to stop any Japanese ship that tried to strike the convoy as it passed Manila Bay. Around 10:30 p.m., some fifty miles west-southwest of the bay, Russell and the destroyers Charles Ausburne, Braine, and Shaw found the Japanese destroyer Hinoki and opened fire. Hinoki exploded and sank within about twenty minutes under the combined gunfire. Russell was ordered to recover survivors. Men were seen swimming, and they refused to be taken aboard. Wicks received the Silver Star for his conduct that night. The award recognized that he closed the enemy destroyer and directed Russell's batteries so that her fire helped sink the ship during the approach to Lingayen.

On 9 January 1945 the force reached Lingayen Gulf, and Russell screened the transport area off the beaches. Her combat service then gave way to the yard. She went to Seattle for overhaul, and the work was still going on when the war ended in August 1945. In September the ship was prepared for inactivation. Wicks was detached on 15 September 1945. Russell was decommissioned on 15 November 1945, stricken on 28 November, and sold for scrap on 28 September 1947.

On 29 September 1945 he became captain of Dashiell (DD-659), relieving Douglas Lee Lipscomb Cordiner. Cordiner had commanded the Fletcher-class destroyer since 24 July 1944, through the Philippine landings and the Okinawa campaign. The ship had been commissioned on 20 March 1943 under John Boyd McLean and had also been commanded by Eugene Alexander Barham. Wicks joined her at Pearl Harbor after the surrender. Late in September she lay in the harbor nested between Converse and Schroeder, alongside the tender Altair. On 9 October 1945 she sailed from Pearl Harbor for the Atlantic coast in Task Force 11, with Schroeder and other ships of Destroyer Division 50 in company.

The voyage home was a peacetime passage, and Wicks remained in command through the standby months that followed. His tour ended when Dashiell was decommissioned on 30 March 1946. Those two commands were the heart of his war record: a year in Russell that carried him from Leyte to Lingayen and earned him the Silver Star off Manila Bay, and then Dashiell, which he brought back from Pearl Harbor and laid up after the victory. He retired as a captain. He died on 21 December 1980.