Ships
- USS Wadsworth (DD-516) Captain from 16 March 1943
Commander John F. Walker took command of the new Fletcher-class destroyer Wadsworth (DD-516) when she was commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 16 March 1943. Bath Iron Works had laid her keel the previous August and sent her down the ways on 10 January 1943. Walker, already a commander, was her first commanding officer, responsible for a crew of roughly 270 men and a ship armed with five 5-inch guns, torpedoes, and a full outfit of depth charges.
Her first months were a working-up cruise. Wadsworth left Boston on 5 April 1943, exercised in Casco Bay, and then ran south for shakedown out of Guantanamo Bay. She returned to the Boston yard for post-shakedown repairs. On 23 May she went to sea again and screened the carriers Princeton and Yorktown during training out of Port of Spain, Trinidad. She called at Norfolk on 17 June and was back in Boston the next day.
In the latter part of July 1943 Walker took Wadsworth out of Boston with a task group built around the carriers Lexington, Princeton, and Belleau Wood. The ships crossed the Pacific and reached Pearl Harbor on 9 August. From there the destroyer moved into the South Pacific, where she would spend the rest of his command, working from harbors in the New Hebrides and along the Solomon Islands chain.
Late that summer she was sent after Japanese submarines. On 1 September 1943, south of Espiritu Santo, Wadsworth gained a sound contact and attacked with depth charges. Wartime accounting credited her with the Japanese submarine I-182. Between hunts she took up the ordinary destroyer work of the theater, screening troop transports and moving with other ships of her division.
On 1 November 1943 Wadsworth was in the screen for the landings at Cape Torokina, on the island of Bougainville, the opening assault in Empress Augusta Bay. Through the rest of 1943 and into 1944 she stayed with that campaign, escorting reinforcement echelons into the bay, standing by transports, and using her guns against Japanese positions ashore as the beachhead was enlarged.
By late spring 1944 the ship was preparing for the Marianas. On 31 May, while Wadsworth lay in Havannah Harbor, Walker took on the additional duty of commander of Destroyer Division 90 and flew his pennant in his own ship. On 2 June the division sailed with Battleship Division 3 as Task Group 53.14. On the morning of 14 June, Wadsworth screened the battleships Pennsylvania and Idaho and the light cruiser Honolulu during the bombardment of the eastern shore of Tinian. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea she remained with the forces that pursued the Japanese fleet until the chase was broken off several hundred miles short of Okinawa, then returned to patrol off Saipan. On 5 July 1944 Walker was released from the division command and continued as captain of Wadsworth.