Ships
- USS Stanly (DD-478) Captain, 25 March 1945 – 31 October 1945
Richard Shaw Harlan was born on 8 August 1915, with his home in Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in the class of 1938 and made his career in the Navy. He died on 26 October 1998, having retired as a captain.
In the last year of the Pacific war he was a lieutenant commander in destroyers. From 7 January to 30 January 1945 he commanded USS Caldwell (DD-605). On 25 March 1945 he took command of the Fletcher-class destroyer Stanly (DD-478) and remained her commanding officer until 31 October 1945.
He relieved John Benjamin Morland, who had commanded Stanly since 1 January 1944. The ship had been in commission since 15 October 1942, when James Marshall Robinson brought her into service. Ralph Jacob Baum had her for ten days in December 1942, and Robert William Cavenagh then commanded her until the start of 1944. Robinson and Cavenagh both later rose to rear admiral. Harlan reported at Ulithi, where Stanly was repairing after her screening duty off Iwo Jima.
The repair period ended almost as soon as he arrived. Stanly sailed on 27 March and reached the waters off Okinawa late on 31 March, as the assault on the island began. Through the first eleven days of April she stood radar picket stations on the exposed line that warned the fleet of air raids and met them first. On 12 April she was on a station north of the island when USS Cassin Young was struck by a suicide plane. Harlan took Stanly toward the damaged destroyer, and fighters working with the picket shot down six enemy dive bombers in the raid.
The same attack then turned on Stanly. Suicide aircraft and piloted rocket bombs came in together. Harlan kept the ship under heavy antiaircraft fire, and her guns brought two of the attackers down. A rocket bomb hit the starboard bow a few feet above the waterline, passed through the forward hull, and detonated in the sea off the port side. A second burst close aboard added to the damage. He put the crew straight onto the flooding and the holes in the bow, and Stanly stayed in action on the picket line. For his conduct that day he received the Silver Star. The award, forwarded by Commander Destroyers, Pacific, in November 1945, recorded him as a lieutenant commander at the time of the fight.
Stanly was made fit to continue and, on 5 May, escorted a convoy back to Ulithi for fuller repairs. On 28 May, after she left the lagoon for gunnery practice, an explosion in five-inch mount 55 killed two men. She entered Apra Harbor, Guam, on 3 June to repair the mount and remained there on ready status through the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945. That autumn she went to the Mare Island Navy Yard for an overhaul that began on 5 September and ran past the end of his tour. Harlan left the ship on 31 October 1945. He was advanced to commander and retired from the Navy as a captain.