Ships
- USS Stembel (DD-644) Captain from 16 July 1943
Thomas Henry Tonseth, recorded as T. H. Tonseth, was an officer of the United States Navy and a member of the Naval Academy class of 1925. He was born in South Carolina on 25 October 1903. He held the rank of lieutenant commander from 1 August 1939 and the rank of commander from 1 August 1942.
From 1 November 1939 to 19 May 1941 he commanded the destroyer USS Schenck (DD-159). That command closed in the spring before the United States entered the Second World War.
On 16 July 1943 Commander Tonseth became the first commanding officer of USS Stembel (DD-644), taking her into commission that day at Bath, Maine. Bath Iron Works had laid the Fletcher-class destroyer down on 21 December 1942 and launched her on 8 May 1943, with Miss Mary G. Helfenstein as sponsor. The ship carried the name of Rear Admiral Roger N. Stembel, a Civil War gunboat officer who later commanded in the Pacific.
Under Tonseth, Stembel conducted sea trials in the Casco Bay area and completed shakedown in Bermuda waters from 11 to 25 August 1943. After a post-shakedown overhaul she sailed on 2 October for San Juan, Puerto Rico, by way of Norfolk. On 8 October she left with a group of warships for Morocco and reached Casablanca on 15 October. A few days later she began the long passage toward Hawaii, calling at Trinidad, the Panama Canal Zone, and San Diego, and she entered Pearl Harbor on 11 November 1943.
Stembel went into overhaul at Pearl Harbor in December 1943. Tonseth was relieved as her commanding officer on 1 December 1943, as that yard period opened. In January 1944 the destroyer sortied with the fast carrier force for strikes in the Marshalls, under the officers who followed him in command.