Ships
- USS Edsall (DD-219) Captain, 4 May 1937 – 24 July 1937
Philip Raymond Kinney was born on 1 October 1896 in Aurora, Iowa, the son of James R. and Ethel Kinney. He was a member of the United States Naval Academy Class of 1920. His naval service ran through both world wars, and he retired as a captain. Navy award records later gave Santa Barbara, California, as his home.
He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 24 March 1936. The next spring he became captain of the Clemson-class destroyer Edsall (DD-219), taking command on 4 May 1937 and leaving her on 24 July 1937.
Edsall was an Asiatic Fleet destroyer. Her work in those years was the long peacetime patrol along the China coast and in Philippine waters, where American ships looked after United States citizens and trade. During Kinney’s months in command the fighting that grew into the Second Sino-Japanese War began at the Marco Polo Bridge, on 7 July 1937. His tour lasted a little less than three months.
Edsall stayed with the Asiatic Fleet after he left. On 1 March 1942 she was sunk in the Java Sea in action with Japanese warships and carrier aircraft, and her company was lost. Kinney’s own next command was the submarine tender Canopus (AS-9). Still a lieutenant commander, he had her from the middle of 1939 until February 1940, while she supported the Asiatic Fleet submarines in the Manila area.
He was promoted to commander on 1 April 1941. In the Second World War he served as communications officer of the South Atlantic Force. By the time that duty was recognized in public he was a captain. The Legion of Merit marked the communications organization he built for the force. That system let the command press German submarines in the South Atlantic and deal with blockade runners trying to pass through. A Navy announcement in March 1944 named him a native of Aurora and gave his age as forty-seven. Kinney died on 7 February 1990. He was buried at Cypress View Mausoleum in San Diego, California.