Ships
- USS Dyson (DD-572) Captain, 14 September 1944 – 24 September 1945
Commander Lawrence Ernest Ruff of the United States Navy commanded the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Dyson (DD-572) from 14 September 1944 to 24 September 1945. He took her in the last year of the Pacific war, as the fleet moved from the central Pacific toward the Philippines and Japan.
Dyson was a fleet destroyer built for screening, gunfire, and torpedo work, and she had already fought with Destroyer Squadron 23 in the Solomon Islands. Those earlier months were the squadron's night surface campaign. When Ruff assumed command, the ship's duty had shifted to the fast carrier task forces then preparing the advance into the Philippines.
Through the autumn of 1944 and the winter that followed, Ruff kept Dyson in the carrier screen for the Philippine campaign. The destroyer held her station around the carriers during the strikes that covered Leyte and Luzon, watching for aircraft and submarines and staying with the formation through the long periods at sea that carried the operation into early 1945.
In the spring and summer of 1945, Dyson continued that screening work as the carrier forces supported the assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and then struck the Japanese home islands. Ruff was still in command when Japan surrendered. He left the ship on 24 September 1945, in the first weeks after the end of the fighting.
Officers who also served in Dyson included Roy Alexander Gano, James Dunnington Babb, and Vincent Patrick Healey. Ruff's own tour was the ship's last year of the war, from the opening of the Philippine campaign to the weeks just after the surrender.