Ships
- USS Saratoga (CV-3) Captain from 22 June 1944 · Relieved on 24 July 1944
Thomas Upton Sisson was born on 29 February 1904 and was from Winona, Mississippi. He entered the United States Naval Academy with the Class of 1924 and made his career as a naval aviator. By 1 July 1938 he was a lieutenant commander.
He married Edith Grey Nance. Their son, Thomas Upton Sisson Jr., was born in San Diego on 9 September 1932, during a Pacific-coast tour, and later entered the Naval Academy and served in submarines.
In the Second World War Sisson was aviation officer on the staff of the Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet. He was advanced to commander on 17 July 1942 and to captain on 10 June 1943. As a commander he received the Legion of Merit for work that helped form escort-carrier operations and tactics and guided how the Atlantic Fleet’s air strength was placed and used. His son later described those years as service in the Atlantic, in the North African campaign, and in the Pacific.
Saratoga (CV-3), the fast carrier completed from a battle-cruiser hull and commissioned in 1927 under Harry Ervin Yarnell, came back from raids with the British Eastern Fleet in the East Indies and reached the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton on 10 June 1944 for a summer overhaul. Sisson took command on 22 June 1944 and was relieved on 24 July 1944, so his tour fell in that yard period. Officers who had commanded her in earlier years included William Frederick Halsey, Jr. and John Henry Towers.
He retired as a captain. In March 1955 he published an essay on aircraft carriers and on the principle that operations at sea depend on a decisive naval superiority.