Ships
- USS San Francisco (CA-38) Captain, 29 May 1937 – 19 June 1939
Ralph Chandler Parker was born on 22 May 1884. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the Class of 1907, served through two world wars, and retired as a captain. He died on 24 September 1979.
In the First World War he commanded Winslow, Luce, and Janis on patrol in waters threatened by submarines and mines, and on escort duty with convoys of troops and supplies. He was a commander then, and that service brought him the Navy Cross. His command of Luce began on 11 September 1918. He attended the Naval War College in 1921 and 1922, then commanded the destroyer Brooks from 16 June 1922 until 31 July 1923.
He served in the War Plans Division in 1929. By 30 June 1935 he held the rank of captain. His seagoing command in that rank was the heavy cruiser San Francisco.
Parker took command of San Francisco on 29 May 1937 and left her on 19 June 1939. The New Orleans-class cruiser had been commissioned at the Mare Island Navy Yard on 10 February 1934, with Royal E. Ingersoll as her first commanding officer. During Parker’s two years she was a peacetime ship of the Pacific fleet, busy with training, gunnery, and the long cruises that kept a heavy cruiser and her crew ready.
San Francisco later became one of the most fought cruisers in the Pacific. She was at Pearl Harbor when Japanese aircraft attacked on 7 December 1941. Daniel Judson Callaghan, who had commanded her at the opening of the war, returned as a rear admiral and was killed when she met a Japanese force off Guadalcanal on 13 November 1942. Her commanding officer that night, Cassin Young, was killed on the bridge. The executive officer, Herbert Emery Schonland, carried on the action and saw the ship through.
In 1941 Parker commanded the Alaska Sector. In 1942 he was engaged with the Japanese attack on the Aleutians. He later served at a naval training school at Princeton and on the staff of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz at Pearl Harbor. From 13 May 1943 to 1 September 1945 he worked in the Analytical Section of the Operations Division on the staff of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, service for which he received the Legion of Merit. In 1963 he recorded an oral history that ran from the Naval Academy and the convoy routes of the First World War through the Aleutians and that Pacific staff.