Ships
- USS Craven (DD-382) Captain, 16 November 1943 – 1 February 1945
Raymond Lester Fulton was born on 8 May 1910 in Osceola, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1933 and was commissioned an ensign on 1 June 1933. On graduation he married Elizabeth. The family home was in North Hills, Philadelphia. He and Elizabeth had two sons, Raymond Lester Fulton and Robert William Fulton, and a daughter, Joanne Fulton.
He became a lieutenant (junior grade) on 1 June 1936 and a lieutenant on 1 April 1941. On 1 October 1942 he was promoted to temporary lieutenant commander. On 16 November 1943 he took command of the Gridley-class destroyer Craven (DD-382), relieving Francis Thomas Williamson. The ship was then on the West Coast, in the closing weeks of an overhaul at Mare Island that had started in October after her long tour in the South Pacific.
Fulton brought Craven back to the fighting fleet early in 1944. On 1 January he was advanced to temporary commander. On 19 January the destroyer left Pearl Harbor to screen the fast carriers of Task Force 58. In February those carriers struck Wotje, Taroa, and Eniwetok while American troops seized the Marshall Islands. Working from Majuro, Craven stayed with the carriers for strikes on Palau, Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai, for the covering operations off Hollandia, and for raids on Truk, Satawan, and Ponape.
After a trip to Pearl Harbor in May 1944, Craven joined the Fifth Fleet for the invasion of the Marianas. She screened the carrier attacks on Guam, Saipan, and Rota and the sweeps against the Bonin Islands. On 19 and 20 June, during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, she remained beside the carriers and added her guns to their antiaircraft defense. She kept that screening duty through the strikes of July, August, and September on the Bonins, Guam, Yap, and the Palaus.
Craven returned to Pearl Harbor on 11 October 1944 for overhaul and training. She sailed for the Atlantic on 2 January 1945 and entered New York on 26 January. Fulton left the ship on 1 February 1945, and Robert Edward Sinnott succeeded him in command.
On 21 May 1945 he became commanding officer of the destroyer Dyess (DD-880), still a temporary commander. He remained in the Navy, later served as a captain, and rose to rear admiral. He died of cancer on 29 January 1965, at the age of fifty-four, in the naval hospital at Alameda, California.