Ships
- USS Schroeder (DD-501) Captain from 7 June 1944
Robert Wallace McElrath, Jr., was born on 18 September 1912 in Calloway County, Kentucky. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1936 and was commissioned an ensign on 4 June 1936. He became a lieutenant (junior grade) on 4 June 1939 and a lieutenant on 16 March 1942.
Wartime promotion came in two steps. He was made a temporary lieutenant commander on 1 May 1943 and a temporary commander on 15 March 1944. On 7 June 1944, with the rank of commander, he took command of the destroyer Schroeder (DD-501).
Schroeder was a Fletcher-class destroyer built by the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company at Kearny, New Jersey. She had been commissioned on 1 January 1943 under John Treadwell Bowers, and by the early summer of 1944 she was already a veteran of the Central Pacific. McElrath relieved Bowers and kept the ship in the Pacific Fleet for the last year of the war. In that period a destroyer of her kind screened the fast carriers, guarded amphibious forces, and answered calls for gunfire as the fleet moved from the Marianas toward Japan. The ship’s service across the whole war, beginning under Bowers and continuing under McElrath, was marked by ten battle stars.
He remained captain after the fighting ended. His command of Schroeder ran until 23 March 1946, when the destroyer was taken out of active service and laid up.
McElrath stayed in the Navy. He was promoted to captain on 1 February 1955 and was released from active duty on 1 July 1961. He died on 21 January 1977 in Los Angeles County, California, at the age of sixty-four.