Ships
- USS Franks (DD-554) Captain, 30 July 1943 – 30 June 1944
Nicholas Adair Lidstone was born on 4 November 1905 in San Saba County, Texas, the son of Lamar and Mary Adair Lidstone. He grew up in Bellingham, Washington, and finished high school at Fairhaven. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1930 and remained a career officer. He was promoted to lieutenant on 30 June 1938 and to lieutenant commander on 15 June 1942.
On 30 July 1943 he became the first commanding officer of Franks (DD-554), a new Fletcher-class destroyer commissioned that day at Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding in Seattle. The ship carried the name of William Joseph Franks, a Civil War sailor who received the Medal of Honor for his part in the fighting at Yazoo City in 1864. Lidstone, a lieutenant commander, took the new crew from the builder's yard into the Pacific war.
Franks reached Pearl Harbor on 25 October 1943 and sailed on 10 November for the invasion of the Gilbert Islands. She guarded the escort carriers whose aircraft covered the landings at Tarawa, then stayed on patrol off Betio through 27 December. She returned to Pearl Harbor afterward for a short repair period.
Through the first half of 1944 Lidstone kept Franks with the forces moving west across the central Pacific. The destroyer screened carriers in the Marshall Islands operation, including the assault on Kwajalein and the advance to Eniwetok, then stayed with the fast carrier groups for strikes in the western Carolines, the Hollandia landings on New Guinea, and raids on Truk. In June she was still his ship for the opening of the campaign against Saipan and for the Battle of the Philippine Sea. On 30 June 1944 he turned the command over to David Richard Stephan.
Stephan commanded Franks until 2 April 1945, when the destroyer was badly damaged in a collision with the battleship New Jersey off Okinawa and Stephan was fatally injured. Gerald Frederick Case held acting command until 22 April 1945, when Eugene Baker Henry took over and remained in command into 1946.
Lidstone stayed in the Navy for about thirty years. He reached the rank of captain in July 1949, commanded destroyers again during the Korean War, and retired as a rear admiral. In 1959 he received the Maritime Man of the Year award in Seattle. Back in Bellingham he served through the mid-1960s as executive vice president and manager of the chamber of commerce. He was a member of the Bellingham Rotary Club and of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and he helped found the Fourth Corner Fly Fishing Club.
Lidstone died on 4 April 1997 at St. Joseph Hospital in Bellingham, at the age of 91. He was survived by his wife, Betty Musser Lidstone, and by their daughters, Nancy Pickford and Judith Fowler. A service was held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and he was buried with military honors at Bayview Cemetery.