Ships
- USS Wilkes-Barre (CL-103) Captain from 1 July 1944 · Relieved on 17 August 1945
Robert Lee Porter, Jr., took the light cruiser Wilkes-Barre (CL-103) when she commissioned on 1 July 1944 and had her until 17 August 1945. He was the captain who put her alongside the burning carrier Bunker Hill on 11 May 1945. He retired a rear admiral.
Find a Grave gives his birth as 13 September 1895, in Maryland. Uboat.net gives 16 February 1895. The Philadelphia Inquirer, in the obituary reprinted on the Find a Grave page, said he was 93 when he died at the end of March 1989. A man born on 16 February 1895 would have turned 94 the month before. The September date is the one that fits the age in the obituary, and it is the date used here. The February date is left on the record as a disagreement. Nothing fetched names his parents.
The Inquirer and Hall of Valor both call him a graduate of the Naval Academy, class of 1917. The obituary says he spent 32 years in the Navy. He first arrived in Philadelphia in 1917, aboard the battleship Pennsylvania, and during the First World War served in Connecticut. Uboat.net lists him in command of the light minelayer Ramsay (DM-16) from 26 May 1936 to 25 September 1939, a commander from 30 June 1937, a temporary captain from 1 January 1942, and a captain from 30 June 1942. No Lucky Bag page was fetched.
NavSource dates his command of Wilkes-Barre from 1 July 1944 to 17 August 1945. DANFS names him at the commissioning as Capt. Robert L. Porter, Jr., and names him again when the cruiser went alongside Bunker Hill. Hall of Valor records a Legion of Merit, as a synopsis only, the citation itself marked needed, for commanding Wilkes-Barre in the Fast Carrier Task Force, in Tokyo Bay, from July 1944 to August 1945. The bureau bulletin it cites is No. 360, February 1947. The Inquirer says his other honors included the Bronze Star, and that on his return from the Pacific he was named honorary mayor of Wilkes-Barre.
Most of his shore duty was in Philadelphia. He retired in 1949 as deputy commander of the Navy base there, and he had also been acting commander of the naval shipyard. He lived in Wynnewood and later in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He was deputy director of Philadelphia's civilian defense, sat on the Philadelphia Civil Defense Board and the Philadelphia Parking Authority, and for several years taught at Villanova. His wife, Mary Norris Porter, died in 1982. He died at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. Find a Grave and Hall of Valor date the death 28 March 1989. The Inquirer of Saturday, 1 April 1989, says he died on Wednesday, which would be 29 March if the paper is counting from that Saturday. Burial was at Arlington National Cemetery. The obituary names daughters Mary Porter Frese and Dorothy Porter Leese and a son, David N.