Ships
- USS Alabama (BB-60) Captain from 14 November 1944 · Relieved on 18 January 1945
Captain Ralph Smith Riggs of the United States Navy commanded the battleship USS Alabama (BB-60) from 14 November 1944 until 18 January 1945. He came to her bridge while the fast carrier forces were pressing the war westward through the Philippines, and the big ships were spending long weeks at sea as screen and heavy support for those carriers.
He followed Fred Durrel Kirtland in command. Alabama, a South Dakota-class battleship, had already served more than a year in the Pacific, guarding carriers and bringing her main battery to bear when the fleet closed on Japanese bases. In November 1944 that duty centered on Luzon, where carrier aircraft struck airfields that could still reach the invasion forces ashore.
Through the rest of November and into December, Alabama stayed with the task force for further strikes in the Philippines. In mid-December a typhoon overtook the formation east of Luzon. Three destroyers foundered in the storm. Alabama came through with the heavy ships, and the force retired to Ulithi to replenish and put the weather damage in order.
Early in January 1945 she sortied again. The carriers and their escorts passed Luzon Strait and entered the South China Sea, the farthest west the fast carrier force had yet steamed. Aircraft from the task groups attacked shipping and shore targets along the coast of French Indochina, at Hainan and Hong Kong, and on Formosa, while Alabama kept station in the screen. Riggs was still her captain as that raid ran its course.
William Bernard Goggins relieved him on 18 January 1945. Alabama remained in the Pacific war and later took part in the Iwo Jima and Okinawa operations. Riggs's own tour, a little more than two months, covered the Luzon strikes at the close of 1944, the December typhoon, and the South China Sea raid.