Ships
- USS Sims (DD-409) Captain from 1 August 1939
William Arthur Griswold (born 25 September 1898) was a United States Navy officer from Goldsboro, North Carolina, a graduate of the Naval Academy in the class of 1921, who commissioned the destroyer Sims on 1 August 1939 and commanded her until 6 October 1941, through the Neutrality Patrol in the Caribbean and the North Atlantic and the American deployment to Iceland. His successor in command was lost with the ship at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Navy's Register of July 1944 lists a Commander William A. Griswold among its dismissals from the service on 12 August 1943. The sources examined here give no date or place of death.
He was born on 25 September 1898, according to a compilation of officers' records. The 1921 Lucky Bag gives his home as Goldsboro, North Carolina, and his nickname as "Bill." The sources examined here do not name his parents or describe his family.
The yearbook sketch, which is brief, begins with a joke about his cigarettes: "The worst thing we can say about William is that he smokes Piedmonts. He is the only man that uses such a brand; therefore one pack lasts him longer than two does anyone else." In the matter of dragging he was a "Red Mike," they said, "but if it is the other boy's girl, he automatically changes into a snake." They wondered "if some little girl in North Carolina didn't have something to do with Bill's misunderstanding with the Ac Department his first Plebe year. At any rate, he returned and has crossed all the rivers, and not once has he ever mentioned any one girl's name with enthusiasm." One could not stay around him five minutes without hearing about Goldsboro, and the druggist on its corner would ask a visitor about "Goldsboro's part of the Navy." The sketch closes with a commonplace: he "does love children and the old saying is 'If a man loves dogs and children he can't be very bad.'" Under his name the yearbook lists one stripe.
He was commissioned an ensign with the class of 1921. The Register of 1933 carries him as a lieutenant, the Register of 1940 as a lieutenant commander, and the Register of 1942 as a commander; a compilation dates his rank of lieutenant commander from 3 June 1937 and commander from 1 July 1941. The sources examined here do not give his ships or stations between 1921 and 1939.
The Sims was the lead ship of her class, laid down at Bath, Maine, on 15 July 1937 and launched on 8 April 1939. She was commissioned on 1 August 1939, with Lieutenant Commander W. A. Griswold in command. He was forty years old, and the commissioning put him in charge of a new ship a month before Europe went to war.
After shakedown training in the Caribbean and a post-shakedown overhaul at Boston, the Sims joined the Atlantic Squadron at Norfolk and worked with the Neutrality Patrol in Caribbean and South Atlantic waters. In November and December 1940 she patrolled off Martinique. On 28 May 1941 she arrived at Newport, Rhode Island, and operated from there. She sailed for Iceland on 28 July 1941 with an American task force; in August she patrolled the approaches to Iceland, and in September and October she made two North Atlantic patrols as part of Destroyer Squadron 2.
Griswold handed the ship over on 6 October 1941, at the age of forty-three, to Lieutenant Commander Willford M. Hyman, of the class of 1924. Hyman took her to the Pacific with the carrier force, and on 7 May 1942, in the Battle of the Coral Sea, Japanese aircraft sank the Sims while she was escorting the oiler Neosho. Fourteen men survived. Hyman was not one of them. Griswold had been gone seven months when that happened.
No action report, letter or newspaper account from his time in command has been found, and the sources examined here give no description of the Sims as a ship he commanded: her routine, her crew, or an incident at sea.
The Register of July 1944 lists William A. Griswold, commander, among the year's dismissals from the Navy, with the date 12 August 1943. The entry gives no reason, and the sources examined here contain no court-martial record, newspaper report, or other account of what lay behind it. Nothing was found about where he lived afterward, whether he married, or when he died.
The record of William Arthur Griswold thus has two ends. At one is a yearbook joke about Piedmont cigarettes and a loyal Goldsboro boy. At the other is a single line in the Navy's register. Between them are the two years in which he commanded a new destroyer in the Atlantic neutrality patrol, on the eve of America's entry into the war.