Ships
- USS Saratoga (CV-3) Captain from 15 March 1940 · Died aboard on 28 May 1940
Robert Potter Molten, Jr., was born in Philadelphia on 12 November 1886. He entered the United States Naval Academy in 1906 and graduated with the class of 1911. His first sea duty was in the battleship Minnesota.
He next went out to the Asiatic Station. In 1913 and 1914 he served in the armored cruiser then named Saratoga, years before the carrier Saratoga entered service, and he also served in the gunboats Samar and Helena. In 1915 he married Elizabeth Gibbs Wylly in Shanghai. They had three children, Robert Potter, Richard Wylly, and Alice Lalor. From 1916 to 1918 he was in Baltimore while that old cruiser was employed as a minelayer. After the armistice he had further sea duty in Denver, Pittsburgh, and Alabama.
In 1928 he moved into naval aviation. A short tour in Saratoga was followed by duty in Lexington and then in Langley. After a stretch in the Navy Department, he commanded Fleet Air Base Coco Solo, in the Canal Zone, from 1932 to 1934. He completed the Naval War College course in 1935.
That year he returned to Saratoga as executive officer. William Frederick Halsey, Jr. commanded the carrier during Molten's time as second in command. Molten left the ship in 1936 for the staff of the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet. In July 1937 he joined the plans section in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and stayed there until March 1940.
He took command of Saratoga on 15 March 1940. The carrier was in Hawaiian waters when he died on board on 28 May 1940, of coronary thrombosis. He was fifty-three. Commander James Marshall Shoemaker, the executive officer, assumed temporary command. Molten was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Elizabeth was later buried in the same grave.