Ships
- USS Norman Scott (DD-690) Captain from 5 November 1943
Seymour D. Owens was born in Peking on 21 February 1910. He entered the United States Naval Academy as a midshipman in June 1927, graduated with the Class of 1931, and was commissioned an ensign on 4 June 1931. At the Academy he rowed on the crew. In the peacetime Navy he served in the gunboat Asheville, the light cruiser Cincinnati, and the destroyer Gilmer.
By 1941 he was aboard the destroyer Ludlow. In October 1942 he took command of the older destroyer McCormick. He was appointed a commander on 1 November 1943, with date of rank from 1 November 1942, and within days he received a new ship.
On 5 November 1943 Owens became captain of the Fletcher-class destroyer Norman Scott at her commissioning. Bath Iron Works had laid the ship down on 26 April 1943 and launched her on 28 August, with the widow of Rear Admiral Norman Scott as sponsor. The admiral, killed off Guadalcanal in November 1942, was the ship's namesake. Owens addressed the ship's company at the commissioning ceremony in the Boston Navy Yard. Through the early winter Norman Scott finished fitting out and worked up on the East Coast.
On 14 January 1944 she left Boston as escort for the heavy cruiser Canberra and reached Pearl Harbor on 1 February. She went almost at once into the Marshalls operation, screening the escort carrier Gambier Bay on the way to Majuro. After a return to Pearl Harbor she prepared for the Marianas. Off Saipan she screened heavy bombardment ships and also took a close-in fire-support station of her own. On 14 and 15 June 1944, in difficult water and under repeated fire from shore batteries, Owens handled the destroyer so her guns could be brought against the batteries ashore. For that work he received the Bronze Star.
The same kind of duty followed at Tinian. On 24 July 1944 Norman Scott covered the left flank of a demonstration landing south of Tinian Town, a feint meant to draw Japanese attention from the real assault beaches farther north. Owens took the ship in close to the beach under heavy fire from coastal guns and kept her firing in support of the boat waves. Shore batteries hit Norman Scott six times within a few seconds. Owens was killed at his station. Twenty-two other members of the crew were killed and fifty-seven were wounded. He was thirty-four. The Navy Cross was awarded to him after his death for the way he fought the ship that day.
Norman Scott received temporary repairs at Saipan, then went on to Pearl Harbor and the Mare Island Navy Yard for permanent work. She returned to the western Pacific later in 1944 under other commanding officers and ended the war with the fast carrier forces. A Gearing-class destroyer, Seymour D. Owens (DD-767), was laid down at Bethlehem Steel in San Francisco on 3 April 1944 and formally given his name on 8 January 1945. The hull was still unfinished when the war ended. Construction stopped in January 1946, part of the ship went into the repair of the destroyer Ernest G. Small, and the remainder was later sold for scrap. The name left the Naval Vessel Register on 9 June 1958.