Ships
- USS Cape Gloucester (CVE-109) Captain from 15 December 1945 · Relieved on 5 November 1946
Sherman Everett Burroughs Jr. was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, on 22 February 1903. His father, a lawyer, served in the New Hampshire House and later in the U.S. Congress, and his mother was Helen Sophie Phillips. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1924 and became a naval aviator in 1926. He flew from Langley and Saratoga (1927–29) and was senior aviator in the cruiser Memphis and, in 1938–39, the battleship Arizona.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked he was on Halsey's staff in Enterprise. He took part in the early 1942 raids on the Marshalls, Gilberts, Wake and Marcus and in the Battle of Midway, earning a Silver Star. A second Silver Star followed for his service on Kinkaid's staff at the Eastern Solomons. As commander of Saratoga's Air Group Three he won the Distinguished Flying Cross for strikes in the Solomons in early 1943.
He then became the first commander of the Naval Ordnance Test Station, later Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, where his combat experience guided the choice of rocket weapons that proved highly successful in action. In 1957 he received the L.T.E. Thompson award for building its civilian-military laboratory model. Afterward he commanded Cape Gloucester, served at the Bureau of Ordnance and the Naval War College, and last commanded NAS Quonset Point. He retired in 1954 with a tombstone promotion to rear admiral.
He was an executive with General Precision Equipment Corporation until 1967, then settled in Coronado, California. There he volunteered with the Small Business Administration and visited elderly patients every week. He died in Coronado on 23 September 1992, and his ashes were scattered at sea. Sherman E. Burroughs High School in Ridgecrest, California, bears his name.