Ships
- USS Allen (DD-66) Captain from 9 October 1920 · Relieved on 23 November 1920
Robert Bruce Crichton, a lieutenant (junior grade) in the United States Navy, commanded the destroyer USS Allen (DD-66) for a short tour in the autumn of 1920. He took command on 9 October 1920 and was relieved on 23 November 1920.
Allen was a Sampson-class destroyer built by Bath Iron Works at Bath, Maine. Launched on 5 December 1916, she was commissioned on 24 January 1917 with Samuel Woods Bryant as her first commanding officer. In the opening months of 1917 she patrolled and escorted shipping along the East Coast and in Cuban waters. On 14 June 1917 she left New York with one of the first convoys to carry American troops to France. For the rest of the First World War she served with United States naval forces in European waters, operating largely from Queenstown on patrol and convoy duty. In December 1918 she helped escort the transport George Washington, with President Woodrow Wilson embarked, into Brest, France.
During that wartime cruise command passed from Bryant to Henry David Cooke, Jr. and then to Louis Calott Farley. Allen sailed for home just after Christmas 1918 and reached New York on 7 January 1919. John Edwin Ostrander, Jr. took command on 10 January. The destroyer then settled into Atlantic Fleet duty along the eastern seaboard and in the West Indies. Charles Carroll Soule, Jr. became commanding officer in April 1920 and held the ship until Crichton relieved him that October.
Crichton's weeks aboard fell in the long peacetime interval that followed the war. On 23 November 1920 he turned Allen over to Percy Austin Decker, also a lieutenant (junior grade). On 1 December the ship was attached to the Fourth Division, Fifteenth Squadron, of the Atlantic Fleet, and she left Philadelphia for Charleston, South Carolina, arriving on 3 December. She remained at Charleston into May 1921 and continued Atlantic Fleet service until she was placed out of commission on 22 June 1922.
Allen returned to commission on 23 June 1925 and spent nearly three years training naval reservists of the District of Columbia, then went out of commission again at Philadelphia in March 1928. Recommissioned on 23 August 1940, she was sent to the Pacific and was moored at Pearl Harbor when Japanese aircraft attacked on 7 December 1941. The ship came through that morning intact, and her crew came through unhurt. Officers who commanded her in the Second World War included Daniel Byrd Miller, Parke H. Brady, Homer Howard Nielson, William James Riley, Jr., and James A. Rowe. She was decommissioned for the last time on 15 October 1945 and was sold for scrap on 26 September 1946.