Ships
- USS Munda (CVE-104) Captain from 8 July 1944 · Relieved on 13 May 1945
Loverne Arthur Pope was born in Roseland, Nebraska, on 13 December 1894 and attended the Colorado School of Mines before enlisting in the Navy in August 1917. Commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve in July 1918, he qualified as a lighter-than-air pilot. He flew with the North Sea airship patrol from RAF Howden in Yorkshire and commanded a U.S. Navy dirigible, earning a commendation. In 1919 he brought a British NS-type airship home, and he had duty with the British airship R-34 when she completed the first half of her transatlantic round trip, landing at Mineola, Long Island, on 6 July 1919.
He joined the regular Navy in 1922 and qualified as a heavier-than-air pilot that June. He took the Army photographic course at Chanute Field, and in 1926 made aerial surveys of Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades and of the Gulf of Venezuela. He flew from the cruisers Raleigh and Cincinnati, including eighteen months on the China Station. He commissioned and commanded Patrol Squadron 11 and was commended for its 1937 flight from San Diego to Pearl Harbor and Midway, then served as operations officer of Patrol Wing 2 at Pearl Harbor.
He was executive officer of the seaplane tender Albemarle from her commissioning in December 1940. In November 1941 he was ordered to command NAS Wake Island, but Wake fell before he could get there, so he commanded NAS Johnston Island from February to June 1942. After two years in the Bureau of Aeronautics' flight and photographic divisions, he commissioned the escort carrier Munda at Astoria on 8 July 1944. In August 1945 he became the Bureau of Aeronautics' Director of Photography.
No reliable source found for his later life or death.