Ships
- USS Uhlmann (DD-687) Captain from 22 November 1943
Selden G. Hooper was born on 25 December 1904. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1927 and served as a surface officer in the peacetime Navy. He was promoted to lieutenant on 30 June 1936 and to lieutenant commander on 1 January 1942. By the autumn of 1943 he was a commander.
On 22 November 1943 he became the first commanding officer of Uhlmann (DD-687) when the destroyer was commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Uhlmann was a Fletcher-class ship built by Bethlehem Steel at Staten Island. Her keel had been laid on 6 March 1943, and she was launched on 30 July 1943 with Mrs. C. F. Uhlmann as sponsor. The name honored Ensign Robert William Uhlmann of a patrol squadron, who was killed at Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay during the Japanese attack on Oahu on 7 December 1941.
Hooper took the new ship through shakedown, including training off Bermuda, and then brought her through the Panama Canal into the Pacific. The following months were spent working Uhlmann and her crew up for fleet service.
In the late summer and autumn of 1944, Uhlmann operated with the carrier forces as the fleet pushed into the western Pacific. Hooper received the Silver Star for his conduct as commanding officer from 6 September to 26 October 1944. That period covered the assault on Palau, strikes on Mindanao and in the Visayas, operations off Luzon, and attacks in the Nansei Shoto and against Formosa.
His command of Uhlmann ended on 10 March 1945. On 20 March 1945 he was advanced to the temporary rank of captain. The destroyer stayed in the Pacific through the last months of the war, including picket duty off Okinawa under her next commanding officer, and she was credited with seven battle stars for the Second World War.
Hooper later retired as a rear admiral. In 1957 the Navy tried him by general court-martial for acts committed after he had left active duty. The charges were sodomy, conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces. The court convicted him and sentenced him to dismissal and the forfeiture of all pay and allowances. In 1958 the Court of Military Appeals affirmed the result, holding that a retired officer who still held a commission and drew retired pay remained subject to military law. Hooper died on 7 February 1976. The case left him the only flag officer of the United States Navy convicted by court-martial.