Ships
- USS Stack (DD-406) Captain, 5 February 1943 – 24 August 1943
- USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD-774) Captain from 19 June 1945
Roy Arthur Newton was born in Gainesville, Texas, on 25 July 1907. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1930 and was a lieutenant by April 1938. In the Second World War he served as a lieutenant commander in command of destroyers in the Pacific. He stayed in the Navy after the war and retired as a captain. He died in San Diego, California, on 12 January 1984.
His first wartime destroyer command was the old four-piper Crosby (DD-164), from 21 November 1942 to 1 February 1943. On 5 February 1943 he became captain of USS Stack (DD-406), a Benham-class destroyer, and he kept her until 24 August 1943. Stack had been commissioned in November 1939 under Isaiah Olch. By the time Newton took her, the ship was operating in the Solomon Islands.
On the night of 6–7 August 1943, in the Battle of Vella Gulf, Newton worked Stack into a gun and torpedo attack timed with the other American destroyers. The force sank three Japanese destroyers. Stack came out of the night with no one lost and the ship undamaged. For his handling of her in that fight he received the Navy Cross.
He left Stack on 24 August 1943. His next command came near the end of the war. On 19 June 1945 he became captain of USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD-774), an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer. The ship had already fought the action that made her name. On 11 May 1945, with Baron Joseph Mullaney in command, Hugh W. Hadley and the destroyer Evans met a heavy kamikaze attack off Okinawa. Hugh W. Hadley was badly hit, lost power, and was towed to Kerama Retto, where she went into a floating dry dock for emergency repairs. The Presidential Unit Citation later awarded to the ship recognized that May fight.
Newton’s work was to get the damaged ship home. On 15 July 1945 the dry dock carrying Hugh W. Hadley was towed from Kerama Retto to Buckner Bay, Okinawa. Late that month she left Buckner Bay under tow. The passage was rough. She reached the Hunters Point Navy Yard at San Francisco, by way of Pearl Harbor, on 26 September 1945, still under Newton. He remained her captain until 10 November 1945. Hugh W. Hadley was decommissioned on 15 December 1945, stricken the following month, and sold for scrap in 1947. The hits of 11 May had finished her as a fighting ship, and Newton’s months aboard were the long tow and the time in the yard.