Ships
- USS McKee (DD-575) Captain, 31 March 1943 – 19 May 1944
John Joseph Greytak was born in Pennsylvania on 14 May 1902. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1926 and spent his career in the Navy. He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 1 July 1940, and on 15 August 1942 he was given the temporary rank of commander.
His wartime destroyer duty began with Kane (DD-235), which he commanded from 2 July 1940 until 22 February 1943. He next became the first commanding officer of McKee (DD-575), a Fletcher-class destroyer built by Consolidated Steel at Orange, Texas. Launched on 2 August 1942, the ship went into commission under Greytak on 31 March 1943.
McKee shook down in the Caribbean, including a period off Guantanamo Bay. On 6 July 1943 she left Norfolk for the Pacific in company with the carrier Yorktown, passed through the Panama Canal, and reached Hawaiian waters on 24 July. Greytak kept the destroyer there for about three months of training, and she was then ordered south to join Task Force 53.
The ship arrived in the New Hebrides on 4 November 1943 and was sent to help cover a convoy withdrawing from the landings on Bougainville. On the night of 8 November, during heavy air attacks, her 20 mm guns brought down two Japanese planes. The second plane dropped a torpedo that passed beneath the hull. After fueling at Florida Island on 10 November, McKee screened carriers in a strike on the Japanese base at Rabaul, New Britain.
Greytak remained in command through the next moves of the Pacific offensive. In mid-November 1943 McKee took part in the Gilbert Islands assault at Tarawa. In late January and early February 1944 she was with the Marshall Islands landings at Kwajalein. She then returned to the Southwest Pacific to escort shipping, and in March and April she joined the bombardment of Kavieng on New Ireland and the Hollandia operation on the north coast of New Guinea.
His tour as commanding officer of McKee ended on 19 May 1944. It had run from the day the destroyer was commissioned through the New Guinea campaign. Greytak died on 4 October 1973 in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania.