Ships
- USS Wadleigh (DD-689) Captain from 16 February 1945
Robert Cameron Morton was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 17 November 1912, and Arlington, Massachusetts, was his home town. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the Class of 1936 and was commissioned an ensign on 4 June 1936. He became a lieutenant (junior grade) on 4 June 1939 and a lieutenant on 30 June 1942. On 1 May 1943, with the Pacific war in full stride, he was promoted to temporary lieutenant commander. On 15 March 1944 he received the temporary rank of commander, the grade he held through the rest of the fighting and the one under which he is remembered as a wartime destroyer captain.
His combat command before the last year of the war was the destroyer Bache (DD-470). As her commanding officer he received the Legion of Merit with Combat V for service from 25 December 1943 to 24 October 1944, covering the Allied advance through New Guinea, the Moluccas, and into the Philippines. Bache was often under air attack while she worked close to the beach. Morton directed her gunfire against shore batteries and troop concentrations during the assaults at Cape Gloucester, Hollandia, Wakde, Biak, Noemfoor, Morotai, and Leyte, and during bombardments in the Admiralty Islands, at Wewak, at Hansa Bay, and along the Wakde-Sawar coast. That shooting helped break down the defenses in front of the landing forces and earned the combat award attached to the Legion of Merit.
He was still in Bache on the night of 24–25 October 1944, when the Battle of Surigao Strait decided the southern side of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Morton took the destroyer in against major ships of the Japanese fleet. The Navy Cross that followed, forwarded by Commander, Seventh Fleet, in a serial of 9 January 1945, credited that attack with a large part in removing an immediate danger to the transports and other vessels gathered in Leyte Gulf. The citation pointed to his professional skill, forceful leadership, and conduct under fire on that night. He left Bache in December 1944, with both the Navy Cross and the Legion of Merit already attached to his record as a destroyer commander.
On 16 February 1945 Morton became commanding officer of Wadleigh (DD-689), relieving Walter Coulter Winn. Winn had commanded the Fletcher-class destroyer from her commissioning at the Boston Navy Yard on 19 October 1943. By the time Morton came aboard, Wadleigh had already screened President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the return from the Cairo conference, fought in the Marshalls and at Saipan, and taken part in the sinking of the Japanese submarine RO-114 off Tinian. On 16 September 1944, while sweeping mines in the Palau Islands, she struck a mine. Three of her crew were killed and the hull was badly damaged, and she went to the West Coast for a long repair. Morton took command during that recovery. On 11 April 1945 she was photographed off the Mare Island Navy Yard, repaired and ready to go back to the fleet.
Morton brought Wadleigh out to the western Pacific again in May 1945. For the next three months she stood radar picket duty and screened heavier ships during raids on Japanese targets, the last offensive stretch of the Pacific war. Japan’s surrender in August ended that work. Wadleigh then entered Tokyo Bay and was present on 2 September 1945 when the formal instrument of surrender was signed. Morton was her captain for that arrival and for the occupation duty that followed, closing a command that had begun while the ship was still in the yard and had carried her through the final campaign.
He remained in Wadleigh after the fighting stopped and saw her first commission through to the end. His tour closed on 20 June 1946, the day the destroyer was decommissioned and laid up. Morton stayed in the Navy after he left her and retired as a captain. He died on 8 June 2003 and was buried at Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park.