Ships
- USS Portland (CA-33) (from battle record)
Laurance Toombs DuBose was born in Washington, D.C., on 21 May 1893, the only son of Dr. George P. DuBose and Louise Toombs. He finished Western High School in 1909 and entered the Naval Academy, where classmates knew him as "Dubie", and he graduated and was commissioned ensign on 7 June 1913. His first ship, the battleship Connecticut, took part in the blockade of Veracruz in 1914 and carried Marines to Haiti. In the First World War he was engineer officer of the battleship Alabama and then served in the Bureau of Navigation.
Between the wars he alternated between ships, staffs and classrooms. He was executive officer of the new destroyer Kane in 1920 and commanded Lansdale in 1921, served on William D. Leahy's mine squadron staff and in the Bureau of Aeronautics under William Moffett, and was navigator of the cruiser Richmond in Hawaiian and Chinese waters. He taught at the Naval Academy, commanded the destroyer Schenck from 1932 to 1934, and in 1937 became the first executive officer of the light cruiser Brooklyn. After the Naval War College senior course he was promoted to captain on 1 July 1940 and stayed on its staff.
When war came he asked for combat duty, and on 16 May 1942 at Tongatapu he took command of the heavy cruiser Portland. Within weeks she was at Midway, screening Yorktown; when the carrier was lost DuBose took her survivors aboard and carried them to Pearl Harbor. Portland bombarded Tulagi and Guadalcanal during the landings in August and fought at the Eastern Solomons.
At the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on 26 October 1942 she was escorting Enterprise under heavy air attack. Late in the fight, with her steering lost, she was struck by three torpedoes from a Japanese submarine. None exploded, probably because they had been fired too close to arm. DuBose received the first of his three Navy Crosses.
Three weeks later, in the night action off Guadalcanal on 13 November under Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan, a torpedo wrecked Portland's stern and jammed her into a circle. DuBose fought her anyway; she helped sink the destroyer Akatsuki and finished off the crippled Yūdachi, then limped to Tulagi and was eventually towed toward Sydney for repairs. That night brought his second Navy Cross.
Promoted to rear admiral in May 1943, he led Cruiser Division 13, first in the Mediterranean off Sicily with his flag in his old ship Brooklyn, then in the Pacific with Birmingham, Santa Fe, Mobile and Biloxi. His cruisers supported Tarawa and Bougainville, covered the Truk strikes, and in mid-1944 shelled Chichijima. During the October 1944 air battle off Formosa his group shot down nearly every attacker and shepherded the torpedoed Houston and Canberra to safety, earning his third Navy Cross. At Cape Engaño on 25 October his cruisers finished the carrier Chiyoda by gunfire and sank the destroyer Hatsuzuki.
After 30 months at sea he went home to the Naval Examining Board, then to London as chief of staff to Admiral Harold Stark. After the war he commanded the Sixth Naval District, the First Fleet, and the Eastern Sea Frontier, and served as Chief of Naval Personnel as a vice admiral. He retired on 1 June 1955 and was advanced to admiral on the retired list for combat commendations. He died in Charleston, South Carolina, on 11 July 1967 and is buried at Arlington with his wife, Gertrude Thompson DuBose.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Laurance T. DuBose" (accessed 2 Nov 2026).
Live Pacific Ships page for this officer (Portland; Santa Cruz; Cape Engaño).