Ships
- USS Russell (DD-414) Captain, 14 December 1943 – 14 August 1944
Lieutenant Commander Lewis Robinson Miller of the United States Navy commanded the destroyer Russell from 14 December 1943 to 14 August 1944. He came aboard in the third year of the Pacific war and left the ship eight months later, as the fleet was still moving west across the central ocean.
Russell, hull number DD-414, was a Sims-class fleet destroyer completed just before the United States entered the war. Ships of her type were built to keep station with larger vessels, with a main battery of 5-inch guns, torpedoes for a surface action, and depth charges for submarines. By the time Miller took her, wartime refits had also given destroyers of the class a heavier battery of light antiaircraft guns, because air attack had become the ordinary danger on the screen.
The ship already carried two years of Pacific service when he assumed command. She was at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, got clear of her berth while the raid was still in progress, and fired on Japanese aircraft. In October 1942, during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, she helped take survivors from the carrier Hornet after that ship was abandoned under air attack. Miller's captaincy began on 14 December 1943, well after those actions.
His eight months overlapped the Marshalls campaign and the opening of the fight for the Marianas. A captain in that season kept a destroyer on the screen: holding station on carriers and transports, searching for submarines, standing antiaircraft watches, and turning the ship toward men in the water when a larger vessel was hit. Miller had Russell for the whole of that tour, from the December day he reported until 14 August 1944.
He was detached from Russell on 14 August 1944. The destroyer remained in the Pacific and came through the war afloat. Other officers of Russell in that war included James Carter Pollock, Glenn Roy Hartwig, Warren Howard McClain, Frederick Evans Moore, and John Edward Wicks.