Robert Bolling Kelly was born in New York City on 9 June 1913 and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1935. When the Pacific War began he was a lieutenant in the Philippines, executive officer of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three under John D. Bulkeley and skipper of PT-34.
He was part of the most famous run in PT-boat history. In March 1942 the squadron carried General Douglas MacArthur, his family and staff from Corregidor to Mindanao, and Kelly's PT-34 carried Rear Admiral Francis Rockwell. Kelly received the Silver Star.
A month later, on the night of 8–9 April 1942, Kelly and Bulkeley took PT-34 and PT-41 against the Japanese cruiser Kuma off Cebu. They fired several torpedoes, and the one that hit failed to explode. The next morning Japanese aircraft caught PT-34; Kelly was wounded, the boat had to be beached, and she was destroyed. He received the Navy Cross and the Army's Distinguished Service Cross for "distinguished conduct and extraordinary courage in combat."
The squadron's story became W. L. White's 1942 book They Were Expendable and John Ford's 1945 film, in which John Wayne's character "Rusty Ryan" was based on Kelly.
Kelly went back to the fight in the Solomons, commanding Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Nine in 1943 and 1944, and won a second Silver Star in the New Georgia and Bougainville campaigns. As a commander he took over the destroyer Irwin in June 1945, in time for the end of the Okinawa campaign, and received the Legion of Merit. He kept her until she was decommissioned on 31 May 1946.
After the war he commanded the icebreaker Atka in the early 1950s and the destroyer tender Shenandoah in 1958–59. He retired as a captain in 1961, worked in the aerospace division of Martin Marietta and then as a vocational rehabilitation counsellor for the State of Maryland. He died of pneumonia in Columbia, Maryland, on 23 January 1989 and is buried at Arlington.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Robert Kelly (naval officer)" (accessed 2 Nov 2026).
Wikipedia, "John D. Bulkeley".
Live Pacific Ships page for this officer (MacArthur evacuation, PT-34).