Ships
- USS Picking (DD-685) Captain, 21 September 1943 – 12 August 1944
Raymond Starr Lamb was born on 16 August 1902. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1926 and spent the years before the war in submarines and destroyers. His assignments in that period included executive officer of the submarine Cuttlefish, duty in the Fourteenth Naval District, executive officer of the destroyer Benham, and staff duty with Submarine Division 202 and with the Commander, Asiatic Fleet.
On 2 May 1941 Lamb took command of the submarine Stingray. He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 13 May 1941. Stingray was in the Philippines when the Pacific war began. On 11 December 1941 she left Manila under his command for a patrol in Lingayen Gulf. Machinery trouble cut the cruise short, and she was back at Manila on 24 December. Lamb left Stingray on 29 December 1941.
He returned to destroyers in 1942. Lamb became commanding officer of Meade on 22 June 1942 and stayed in that ship until 10 June 1943. On 15 August 1942 he received the temporary rank of commander.
On 1 August 1943 he was advanced to the temporary rank of captain. He commissioned the new Fletcher-class destroyer Picking on 21 September 1943 and remained her captain until 12 August 1944. Bethlehem Steel had built the ship at Staten Island, and she had been launched on 1 June 1943. After working up off Bermuda, Picking passed the Panama Canal and arrived at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, on 28 December 1943, for service with the North Pacific Fleet in Destroyer Squadron 49. On 2 January 1944 Captain H. F. Gearing, the squadron commander, brought his pennant aboard.
The first half of 1944 was spent on northern patrols and on bombardments in the Kurils. Picking shelled Paramushiro on 4 February 1944, Matsuwa on 13 June, and Paramushiro again on 26 June. In August the destroyer came south to San Francisco for upkeep.
On 12 August 1944 Benedict Joseph Semmes relieved Lamb in command of Picking. The ship then went on to the central Pacific. Charles Thomas Mauro Aug commanded her from 15 August 1945 until she left commission on 20 December 1945. Lamb remained in the Navy into 1957. His decorations included the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal. He died on 1 March 1957.