Ships
- USS Turkey (AM-13) Lieutenant, 1 September 1943 – 26 October 1944 · As an ensign he was the duty officer on board on 7 December 1941, before this command
Richard Johnston Melchor was the Naval Reserve ensign who had the deck of Turkey when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he later returned to her as commanding officer. On 7 December 1941 he was not the appointed captain. Lieutenant Commander Thompson F. Fowler was. Fowler was ashore, and his report calls Melchor, at that moment, duty officer and commanding officer. NavSource lists Melchor again as a lieutenant, Naval Reserve, in command from 1 September 1943 to 26 October 1944.
The action report says he was a reserve officer of six months' sea duty. It does not give his age, his home, or the date he entered the Reserve. No birth date was found.
Six months of sea duty, stated by Fowler in December 1941, is the only measure of his experience the report gives. It does not name a training station or a previous ship. He signed his enclosure as Ensign, USNR, officer of the deck.
His enclosure of 16 December says that at about 0753 he heard an explosion and diving planes, saw that they were Japanese, ordered general quarters, and prepared to get underway. At 0755 the guns fired on low-flying dive bombers from the southwest, a flight he estimated at about eighteen. About five minutes later a second flight of about eighteen passed overhead, out of bearing, toward the Navy Yard, and nine torpedo planes followed the channel over Hospital Point. About 0820 he saw about twenty-five heavy bombers, estimated at 12,000 feet, coming from the west, and about seven bombs landing in the area his enclosure spells West Lock. The executive officer, Boatswain J. Eikam, was back by about 0805. The ship then got clear of the nest and anchored in the stream. Fowler arrived after that. Melchor wrote that the crew responded at once. The ship's expenditure, in Fowler's report, was 37 rounds of 3-inch/50 and about 2,350 rounds of .30 caliber. There were no casualties.
He is next dated when NavSource makes him commanding officer on 1 September 1943. Turkey was then on the West Coast for the overhaul that followed her return from Samoa. She was back at Pearl Harbor on 20 October, inside his tour. Through January 1944 she towed targets and recovered practice torpedoes, as a unit of Service Squadron 6, and she was under repair at Pearl Harbor from 1 March to 24 April. On 10 May she sailed for the Marshalls with the salvage ship Preserver, towing YOGL-7 and YW-68, and reached Majuro on 25 May. She took two YFs on to Kwajalein at the beginning of June. On 15 May 1944 she was reclassified an old ocean tug. From 4 June she passed ammunition at Majuro to the cruisers Santa Fe, Biloxi, and Mobile, and through the summer she towed barges among Majuro, Kwajalein, and Eniwetok. She lay alongside the repair ship Ajax from 29 August to 2 September and sailed for Ulithi on 5 October. On 17 October she went to Ngulu to help with the mined destroyer Montgomery and was back at Ulithi on the 23rd. NavSource relieves him on 26 October 1944, the day before Turkey, under the next captain, helped the torpedoed cruiser Houston into Ulithi. The Mississinewa fire, on 21 November, was after his tour.
No ship after 26 October 1944, and no later rank or date of death, was found.