Ships
- USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) Captain from 5 February 1944 · Relieved on 21 August 1944
Thomas Powers Jeter was born in Florence, Alabama, the son of Richard Cullen and Mary Lee (Powers) Jeter. His official biography gives his birth date as 25 August 1898; Wikipedia and Olympedia give 30 August. He attended the Aiken Institute in South Carolina and entered the Naval Academy from South Carolina in 1915. There he captained the intercollegiate champion fencing team, winning titles in foil, sabre and cane. He graduated early, on 6 June 1918, with the Class of 1919, and finished the war in the destroyer Jenkins out of Queenstown, Ireland.
He won his wings on 20 December 1921. While serving in the Bureau of Aeronautics he fenced foil for the United States at the 1924 Paris Olympics and also served as a White House aide. He studied aeronautical engineering at McCook Field and flew from Saratoga. On the Board of Inspection and Survey he demonstrated new Navy aircraft, and he commanded Fighting Squadron 2 in Lexington (1933–35). After the Naval War College he spent two years as adviser to Argentina's Ministry of Marine in Buenos Aires.
From June 1940 to April 1942 he was navigator and then executive officer of Enterprise, which won the Presidential Unit Citation. He served on Admiral King's staff, and in 1944 he commanded the new Bunker Hill as a task group flagship in the Central Pacific, winning the Legion of Merit with Combat "V" for strikes from March to June 1944. Promoted to commodore in October 1944 as chief of staff to Commander Battleships, Pacific Fleet, he served in 1945 as a technical expert to the U.S. delegation at the San Francisco conference that founded the United Nations. He then commanded NAS Ottumwa and the Naval Pre-flight School at Pensacola. He retired on 1 February 1949 and was advanced to rear admiral.
He married Josephine Augusta Duckett of Hyattsville, Maryland, and they had a son, Thomas Jr. He died on 23 October 1979.