Ships
- USS Rooks (DD-804) Captain from 2 September 1944
Commander Robert F. Martin of the United States Navy took command of the destroyer Rooks when the ship was commissioned at Seattle on 2 September 1944. Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding had laid the hull down on 27 October 1943 and launched her on 6 June 1944. Edith R. Rooks, widow of the officer for whom the destroyer was named, sponsored the ship at the launching.
Rooks (DD-804) was a Fletcher-class destroyer. Her namesake, Captain Albert H. Rooks, had commanded the heavy cruiser Houston in the Netherlands East Indies campaign at the start of the Pacific war. He was killed on the bridge when Houston went down in the Battle of the Sunda Strait on 1 March 1942, and he received the Medal of Honor for that service. Martin’s ship carried that name into the last year of the war.
Martin took the new destroyer through shakedown off San Diego and a yard period at the Puget Sound Navy Yard. Rooks then steamed to the Hawaiian Islands, where the crew rehearsed amphibious landings and practiced shore bombardment.
On 22 January 1945 Rooks sailed from Hawaiian waters with a flotilla of tank landing ships, bound first for Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands on the way toward the forward area. Martin remained in command until 16 February 1945. On 19 February the destroyer arrived off Iwo Jima and began radar-picket duty for the landing. The officer who relieved him was already in command for that work, and for the rest of the ship’s wartime service.