Ships
- USS Cabot (CVL-28) Captain from 10 September 1946 · Relieved on 11 February 1947
Commander Robert Webster Slye of the United States Navy was commanding officer of the light aircraft carrier USS Cabot (CVL-28) from 10 September 1946 until 11 February 1947. He held the rank of commander during that tour. The fighting was already over, and his months in the ship fell in the brief period when the Navy was laying up the carriers that had fought the Pacific war.
Cabot was an Independence-class light carrier, completed on a cruiser hull and commissioned at Philadelphia on 24 July 1943. Through 1944 and 1945 she steamed with the fast carrier task forces, from the Marshalls and the strike on Truk through Hollandia, the Marianas, the Palaus, Leyte, Luzon, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the attacks on Japan. Air groups flying from her were credited with 252 enemy aircraft shot down, and her own guns with eight more. The ship received the Presidential Unit Citation and nine battle stars. On 25 November 1944 a kamikaze hit her flight deck off Luzon. Damage control kept her in formation, and she went on operating. In April 1945 her aircraft joined the carrier strikes that helped sink the Japanese battleship Yamato.
Three officers had already commanded her through that combat cruise. Malcolm Francis Schoeffel commissioned Cabot and had her until May 1944. Stanley John Michael commanded her from May 1944 to February 1945, through the Marianas, Leyte Gulf, and the start of the Philippines campaign. Walton Wiley Smith took her from February 1945 and still had her in December 1945, as the war closed.
Slye assumed command on 10 September 1946. For five months he was responsible for the carrier while the fleet reduced its wartime strength and prepared ships for reserve. On 11 February 1947, the day he was relieved, Cabot was placed out of commission in reserve at Philadelphia.
The carrier returned to service in October 1948 and, years later, served Spain as Dédalo. That later career lay outside Slye's tour. His recorded command is the short postwar watch that ended when Cabot left active duty in February 1947.