Ships
- USS Rail (AM-26) Lieutenant (junior grade), September 1944 – 1 March 1945
Theodore Paul Pierce, a lieutenant (junior grade), commanded Rail from September 1944 to 1 March 1945. NavSource gives September with no day. That month is also the end of Herbert Kincaid Smith's tour. He is not Edward Harris Pierce.
Birth, home, and family were not found.
No academy class and no earlier ship are on the NavSource line.
In October 1944 Rail visited Cairns, Australia, then worked the New Guinea coast, the Admiralties, and, in November, the Halmaheras. Late in November and early in December she towed barges to Leyte, and toward the end of the year she left Manus with the Luzon attack force. On 5 January 1945 she passed Surigao Strait. On the 7th she entered the South China Sea, where Japanese aircraft tried to turn the force back. On the 9th the ships entered Lingayen Gulf, and through the 14th she retrieved, salvaged, and towed. On the 18th, after an inspection of a sunken Japanese submarine that the ship's history does not name, she went south to Leyte and returned to Luzon for operation Mike VII, the landings in Zambales. She assisted the damaged attack transport Cavalier at Grande Island, off Subic Bay, and was back in San Pedro Bay on 4 February. About two weeks later she returned to New Guinea. His tour ended on 1 March, before the Hollandia overhaul the history places in late April.
No later command or date of death was found.