Ships
- USS New York (BB-34) Captain from 1 April 1943 · Relieved on 3 July 1945
Kemp Catlett Christian was a captain in the United States Navy and commanded the battleship New York (BB-34) from 1 April 1943 until 3 July 1945. Those twenty-seven months took an old capital ship through her last wartime operations, first in the Atlantic and European theaters and then in the Pacific.
New York was a battleship of the First World War generation, still carrying a main battery of 14-inch guns. When Christian assumed command she was serving with the Atlantic Fleet. Through 1943 he had her on convoy escort and on repeated gunnery drills, the plain work of keeping troopships covered and a veteran crew sharp enough for combat.
In the spring of 1944 the ship turned to shore-bombardment training for the invasion of Europe. On 25 June 1944 Christian took New York in against the German coastal batteries at Cherbourg. She traded fire with the forts, took a hit from the shore guns, and stayed in the bombardment until the naval force had finished its part of the attack.
That August he brought New York into the Mediterranean for the landings in southern France. Her heavy guns worked the coast as the assault went ashore. After the operation the battleship returned to an American yard, then passed through the Panama Canal and joined the fleet in the Pacific.
In February 1945 New York lay off Iwo Jima. Under Christian her gunners fired on the beaches and on Japanese positions inland, before the Marines landed and in the days that followed. Late in March the ship moved to Okinawa and began a long run of pre-landing fire and call-fire for troops ashore. In April a Japanese suicide aircraft crashed into her. The crew got the damage under control, and New York remained on the gun line.
Christian was relieved on 3 July 1945. He had been her captain from Atlantic convoy duty through the bombardments at Cherbourg, southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and he left the ship still in the Pacific as the war entered its final weeks.