Ships
- USS Wedderburn (DD-684) Captain from 5 May 1945
The officer the Navy’s own books will identify is a Naval Academy man of the class of 1939, born 8 April 1917, an ensign on USS Macdonough in 1940 and 1941, and the only line ensign of that name the directories of those months place on her. Whether he is the ensign who signed Macdonough’s Pearl Harbor report, and whether he later had Wedderburn, are separate questions. The first can be argued from the directories. The second, on the sources read for this essay, cannot be told as a cruise.
He is not Max Joshua Clark of the Royal Australian Navy, the M. J. Clark of lines 98 and 99, Distinguished Service Cross, Nizam and Warramunga. He is not Fire Controlman Third Class Robert William Clark, Jr., of USS Arizona, born 1 October 1917, lost at Pearl Harbor and still unaccounted for. He is not the Supply Corps commander Robert W. Clark of the same directories, not the retired commander Robert W. Clark in charge of the destroyer stores office at San Diego, not the Marine Corps officer Robert W. Clark, and not the Naval Reserve lieutenant Robert W. Clark of the Third Naval District. He is not Robert Wilson Clark of the pay branch, and he is not the Robert William Clark who appears in the 1 January 1960 Register as a Supply Corps ensign, designator 3105, with a birth date in 1936. Charles Robert Clark, Jr., is a classmate in the 1939 Lucky Bag and a different man.
Origins
The date of birth is the one the registers repeat. In the Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of 1 July 1943, on the lieutenants’ list, the line for Robert William Clark, signal 6227, ends in 8 Apr. 17 and 9 July 35, with the double star the page itself explains: commissioned ensign 1 June 1939. The Register of 1 July 1944 prints the same pair, signal 6043, 8 Apr. 17 and 9 July 35. The Register of 1 July 1947, in digits split by the optical text, still reads 4, 08, 17 between the temporary-rank date and the pay-entry date. The Registers of 1 January 1950, 1 January 1955, 1 January 1957, 1 January 1959, and 1 January 1960 print 4 08 17 again, beside the name CLARK ROBERT WILLIAM, in the captains’ or commanders’ run that also carries the class year 1939. Eight April 1917 is the birth date those books agree on. None of them prints a town.
The 1939 Lucky Bag heads his sketch “DENVER, COLORADO.” That is the home a midshipman was given in the yearbook. It is not a birth certificate, and it is not what a Navy Register calls a place of birth. A widely copied officer list on the web gives Alameda, California, as the birthplace and 23 November 1981 at San Diego as the death. Those two places were not found in a register, a yearbook, a ship report, or a newspaper that was opened. They are not used here as facts.
No father, no mother, no brothers or sisters. No wife and no children turned up in a source that was read, as distinct from a search engine’s paraphrase of a page that was not opened. The blank is a blank. It is not a finding that he had no family.
Formation
He entered the Naval Academy on 9 July 1935. That is the “date of entry” on the 1943 and 1944 registers, starred to the class note that they were commissioned ensign on 1 June 1939. From 8 April 1917 to 9 July 1935 is eighteen years and three months. The registers do not print the age. The arithmetic is the only age this essay uses.
The Lucky Bag says where he came from, in the way classmates wrote it. “BOB entered the Academy from the ship named for his state, Colorado. Being naturally savvy, he never lost the advantage which this previous connection with the Fleet gave to him.” The sentence is the yearbook’s. It is not a muster roll of the battleship, and no enlistment date, rating, or length of service before Annapolis was found in a register. The 1 July 1947 Register gives his pay-entry base date as 1 June 1939, the commissioning day, not a day in 1935 or before it. If he had fleet service that counted for pay, this volume does not show it. The yearbook’s “previous connection with the Fleet” is left as the yearbook’s phrase.
The sketch calls him Bob. A second nickname sits above the biography in the optical text as “Clctrkie,” which is what a scan does to a short name and is not treated here as a name he answered to. The rest of the paragraph is their portrait, and it should be read as one. He “never experienced any difficulty in keeping a comfortable amount of velvet in every subject.” Classmates “always found him willing to lend a hand on any problem from an academic explanation to fixing their radios, for Bob has a natural liking and an understanding for gadgets. Included in this line is his hobby of movies.” He was “always active and cheerful,” and he “found plenty of time for outside activities in spite of the fact that the sub squad claimed all of his athletic energy.” “Neither retiring nor aggressive, Bob makes himself welcome in any group.” The yearbook does not define velvet, gadgets, or the sub squad. An activity line on the same page — crew, a movie gang across four years, secretary-treasurer in the first-class year, two stripes — cannot be securely given to him rather than to the other midshipman on the page, John Frederick Miller, Jr. The prose that names the movies and the sub squad is his. The credit line is not claimed for him.
The Academy’s own Annual Register for the academic year 1936–37, the ninety-second, lists him in the present third class, the class of 1939, for the first year of their course. The optical text misreads the years as 1989 and 1986. The volume itself is dated 25 September 1936. In the column headed relative standing for the academic year, Clark, Robert William, is 260, in a class the page counts as 809 members in June 1936. The subject columns beside that number are not labeled clearly enough, in the text that was read, to say what he was good at. Two hundred and sixtieth of eight hundred and nine, after the plebe year, is the standing that can be repeated. The Lucky Bag’s “comfortable amount of velvet” and a place just under the top third of a large class are not the same measurement. Both are left standing.
He was commissioned ensign on 1 June 1939. The Register printed at the Government Printing Office in 1939, with signal numbers effective for the calendar year 1940, lists Robert William Clark as signal 6578, an ensign, date of rank dittoed to the 1 June 39 at the head of that run of new ensigns. On 1 July 1941 he is still an ensign, signal 6570. The signal number moves from year to year. It is an address in the book, not a biography.
The Navy Directory is what puts him on a ship. On 1 June 1940: “Clark, Robert W, ens, uss Macdonough.” On 1 November 1940 the same line, ensign, USS Macdonough. On 1 April 1941, still ensign, still Macdonough. On each of those pages the other Robert W. Clarks are someone else: the Supply Corps commander, the retired commander at the destroyer stores office in San Diego, the Marine first lieutenant at San Diego, and, in April 1941, a Naval Reserve lieutenant in the Third Naval District in New York. The line ensign on the destroyer is this one. The directories do not say what his billet was, or that he was still on board the next month. They say that on those three dates the ensign Robert W. Clark was on Macdonough.
War years as lived
The rank ladder through the war is the part the registers fix, and it is not a cruise.
On 1 July 1942 the lieutenants’ section of the Register carries the class of 1939 in a block. The columns are date of temporary rank, permanent rank, and date of that permanent rank. At the head of the block the temporary date is 15 June 42, the permanent rank is lieutenant (junior grade), and the permanent date is 1 June 42, marked (Y). The volume’s own note says (Y) means subject to examination and/or confirmation. Robert William Clark is signal 6384, inside the dittos. He does not break them. On 1 July 1943 he is still on the lieutenants’ list, signal 6227, and the block that contains him still dittos a temporary rank of 15 June 1942 and a permanent lieutenant (junior grade) of 1 June 1942. One page of that list misreads the permanent day as “1 June 24.” The page before it, in the same list, prints 1 June 42, and the 1942 volume prints 1 June 42. The 24 is the scan.
He is among lieutenant commanders, signal 6043. The new temporary date, dittoed down the class from the head of the block, is 15 March 1944. The permanent rank on that line is still lieutenant (junior grade), still 1 June 1942. On 1 July 1945 he is again on the lieutenant commanders’ list. On 1 July 1947 the section is still lieutenant commanders, and his own digits read the same story: permanent rank in the slot his classmates fill with LTJG, permanent date 1 June 1942, temporary-rank date 15 March 1944, birth 8 April 1917, pay-entry base date 1 June 1939. The optical text spells his permanent rank “L TJC” and spells a neighbor’s year “A 2” where other men in the same column have “4 2.” The pattern of the class is the reading. From the summer of 1942 he was a temporary lieutenant. From 15 March 1944 he was a temporary lieutenant commander. His permanent grade, as late as the summer of 1947, was still lieutenant (junior grade), dated the day the class received it.
None of those register lines names a ship after Macdonough. The directories in hand stop in April 1941. What he did from the spring of 1941 until the morning the directories cannot see, and what he did after that morning until the end of the war, is not in a Register page that was read.
The morning is in a ship’s report, and the report does not use his full name.
Two transcriptions were read: the HyperWar copy of the engagement report, and the copy posted by the Sons of Liberty Museum. They agree in substance. Both give the file number DD351/A16-3, serial 516. The commanding officer’s letter is dated Pearl Harbor, T.H., 14 December 1941, to Commander Destroyers, Battle Force, subject “Engagement Report,” reference “Art. 712, 874(6), USNR.” The enclosed report is from Ensign R. W. Clark, U.S. Navy, dated at sea, 12 December 1941. HyperWar prints the commanding officer’s signature as J. McIsaac. The other transcription prints J. M. McIsaac. The original typescript was not in hand. The initials of the ensign are the same in both.
The commanding officer wrote that the enclosure was the report of Ensign R. W. Clark, “officer with duty on December 7, 1941 and only officer on board at time of attack,” that “Ensign Clark and all under him performed their duties in a highly commendable manner,” and that he himself arrived aboard at 0912, when the attack was over.
Clark’s own letter is the one that says what the morning was. “On Sunday December 7, 1941 I was Officer-of-the-Deck, and Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Macdonough.” In the next sentences he explains the title. The ship was in scheduled overhaul, in company with Destroyer Division One and USS Phelps, alongside USS Dobbin at Berth X-2. Macdonough was the outboard ship. The port side was clear. “I was the only officer on board ship.” All machinery was disabled. All services were being received from Dobbin. The “commanding officer” in his first sentence is the duty he was performing because no other officer was there. It is not a change-of-command order, and the captain’s letter shows the captain back at 0912.
At 0758 the general alarm sounded and the word was passed, “Man your battle stations.” The gangway watch told him that USS Raleigh had been bombed and that unidentified planes were attacking the harbor. That is what he wrote the watch told him. The guns were manned at once. Power tripped out, and ammunition had to be passed by hand through the hatches. About 0801 the port machine guns opened fire on planes, by then identified as Japanese, flying across Ford Island and coming close aboard. At 0806 he ordered the main battery to commence firing in local control on any Japanese plane the guns could bear on. There was no power. The guns had to be loaded, trained, and elevated by hand. From the bridge he tried to make himself heard over the gunfire with a megaphone.
He wrote what he believed the guns had done, and the belief is his, not a score confirmed in any other document read for this essay. “I believe that the gun crews of the Macdonough were responsible for the destruction of at least two enemy planes, one by the main battery, and one by machine gun fire.” Both, he wrote, were hit while flying about 800 yards on the port beam. The plane hit by the 5-inch/38 broke up in mid-air. The other, hit by machine-gun fire, flew off toward the cane fields. He closed on the crew: their performance was highly commendable; he had “the greatest pride and admiration for every member of the crew”; they were calm, and they kept up a rapid fire even when planes came close aboard. The letter is signed R. W. Clark.
The link from that signature to Robert William Clark is the directories, not the report. On 1 April 1941 the only line ensign Robert W. Clark in the Navy Directory is the one on Macdonough, and he is the Academy ensign of 1 June 1939. Eight months sit between that directory and 7 December. A later ensign with the same initials could have been ordered to the ship. No such man was found in the registers that were searched: Robert Wilson Clark is in the pay branch, Robert West Clark sits by a Marine file number, and the line ensign Robert William Clark is the one the 1 July 1941 Register still lists. The identification is the best the books support. It is not a sentence in the report that spells out William.
By 12 December he was still the ensign writing the report, and the dateline is “at sea.” By 14 December the commanding officer was endorsing it at Pearl Harbor. The report does not say where the ship went, or why, or whether Clark stayed in her after he signed. No later directory in hand names his next duty.
The encyclopedia stub, and the command lists that repeat one another, say the next ship was Wedderburn. A destroyer-photo index, crediting Wolfgang Hechler and Ron Reeves, gives the same day, 5 May 1945, and runs him to 4 April 1946, the day that index says she was decommissioned. A second compiler, uboat.net, gives temporary lieutenant commander Robert William Clark, Naval Academy 1939, from 14 May 1945 to 4 April 1946, and prints fueling notes in which USS Iowa tops off Wedderburn with “Lt.Cdr. R.W. Clark” in command on 13 July, 16 August, 21 August, and 24 August 1945. Those notes were not found in a war diary that was opened. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships history of Wedderburn, in the text carried on hazegray.org, never speaks his name. It has the ship screening fast carriers through the summer of 1945, in the screen of Task Group 38.4 when Japan capitulated on 15 August, then with the occupation force around Tokyo Bay, sailing for home on 31 October, at Puget Sound on 19 November, and out of commission in March 1946. March 1946 and 4 April 1946 are not the same day. Five May and fourteen May are not the same day. Because the ship history does not name him, and because the command dates disagree, that summer and that voyage home are not told here as his. The Register of 1 July 1945 does place Robert William Clark among lieutenant commanders. It does not place him on Wedderburn.
Cost
The cost that can be put in his own words is one morning on a destroyer that could not move and could not make electricity.
He was twenty-four. The birth date and the date of the report are enough for that. He was the officer of the deck, and he was alone in that duty: no other officer on board, the captain not back until 0912, the machinery dead, the ammunition coming up by hand, the orders shouted through a megaphone. The report does not say anyone on Macdonough was killed or wounded. It does not say the ship was hit. It does not count the planes except as his belief that the guns got two, one broken up in the air and one last seen heading for the cane fields. A belief in a report is not a confirmed kill, and no second source read here confirms it or takes it back.
The captain’s cost, as the captain wrote it, was absence until the attack was over, and then a sentence of commendation for the ensign and “all under him.” Clark’s answer, in the letter the captain enclosed, was to put the crew’s calm ahead of his own orders. That is what the two letters do. They do not say what either man felt.
Nothing after that morning was found that prices the rest of the war for him: no wound, no lost ship, no citation read in a Register decoration column that could be trusted. Later registers print a digit in the neighborhood of the decoration code. In the 1955 volume, code 8 is the Bronze Star, and the note says only the highest Navy decoration is shown. The digit sits in optical text whose columns slip. It is not read here as a medal he received. No citation was found.
If he had Wedderburn from May 1945, the ship history’s summer — screening, the surrender, Tokyo Bay, the passage to Puget Sound — would be the last of his war, and it would be a captain’s war of other people’s ships and other people’s prisoners and mines, not a morning alone on the bridge. That sentence stays conditional. The sources that name him on her were not traced to a log.
After
The permanent rank caught up after the war, on paper, and the paper does not say where he was.
On 1 January 1950 the Register lists CLARK ROBERT WILLIAM as LCDR, date of present rank 1 July 1949, birth 8 April 1917, first commission 1 June 1939. A page header above that run is read by the optical text as “COMMANDERS LINE,” which does not match the LCDR printed on the line. On 1 January 1955 and again on 1 January 1957 he is a commander, and the date of present rank is again 1 July 1949. The same day is printed for two successive permanent grades. The registers are not reconciled here. They are reported as printed.
On 1 January 1959 he is on the line captains’ list. The designator is 1100. In the 1955 volume’s own table, 110 is a line officer, and a fourth digit of 0 is an officer of the Regular Navy whose permanent grade is ensign or above. The date of present rank is 1 July 1958. Birth is still 8 April 1917. The source code beside him is 01 39, the class year. On 1 January 1960 the same line is still there: line captain, 1100, 1 July 1958, 8 April 1917, lineal number 02560. The registers of those years, as read, do not give a ship, a staff, or a shore station. They give the grade.
No Register after 1 January 1960 was read for him. A retirement on 1 July 1969 is on the same untraced officer list that gives Alameda and San Diego. It is not used. No obituary, no cemetery card, and no widow’s name was found in a source that was opened. What remains in the documents is the yearbook page, the register line from ensign to captain, and the letter he signed at sea on 12 December 1941, in which a twenty-four-year-old ensign, alone on a dead destroyer, ordered the guns worked by hand and then gave the morning to the crew.