Ships
- USS Saratoga (CV-3) Captain from 4 February 1946 · Relieved on 6 March 1946
John Ronald Diffley was born on 4 January 1906. He was commissioned in the Naval Reserve in 1928, became a lieutenant commander on 24 June 1938, a temporary commander on 15 September 1942, and a temporary captain on 25 March 1945. He died in Pensacola, Florida, on 6 July 1980.
His command was the aircraft carrier Saratoga (CV-3). Laid down at Camden, New Jersey, in 1920 as a battle cruiser, she was completed as a carrier after the Washington Naval Treaty ended the battle-cruiser program, and she was commissioned on 16 November 1927 with Harry Ervin Yarnell in command. In the 1930s her captains included Kenneth Whiting, William Frederick Halsey, Jr., John Henry Towers, and Albert Cushing Read. On her flight deck the fleet worked out how American carriers would operate.
Through the Pacific war Saratoga stayed in service after her sister ship Lexington was lost. She was torpedoed more than once, later flew as a night carrier, and then shifted to training duty. After Japan's surrender she carried veterans home in Operation Magic Carpet, more than 29,000 men, the largest number brought back by any single ship. Her deck had recorded 98,549 landings. In January 1946 she was assigned to Joint Task Force One for Operation Crossroads, the atomic tests at Bikini Atoll, taking the target role first marked for the carrier Ranger. Early that year she was at Hunter's Point in San Francisco, being stripped and reduced in crew for the tests.
Captain Diffley assumed command of Saratoga on 4 February 1946, following Captain Frank Akers. For that month the carrier was a ship being fitted as an atomic target, her years as a fighting carrier already over. He was relieved on 6 March 1946 by Captain Stanhope Cotton Ring.
The captains who followed took her west. After the stripping on the coast she reached Pearl Harbor on 7 April 1946 and went on to Bikini. Moored well clear of the aim point, she came through the Able air burst of 1 July with limited damage and a fire on the flight deck. The underwater Baker burst on 25 July sank her in the lagoon, and the Navy struck her from the list on 15 August 1946. Diffley's command had ended on the West Coast in early March, before Saratoga sailed for those tests.