Ships
- USS Conner (DD-582) Captain from 8 June 1943
William Eugene Kaitner (15 May 1903 – 21 October 1977) was a United States Navy officer from Leavenworth, Kansas, a graduate of the Naval Academy in the class of 1927, who retired in 1957 as a rear admiral. He commissioned the Fletcher-class destroyer Conner at the Boston Navy Yard on 8 June 1943 and commanded her for the next twenty months: the Wake Island raid, the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Philippine Sea, the Leyte campaign and Lingayen Gulf, nearly all of it as a screening ship for the fast carriers. He then served as executive officer of the cruiser Los Angeles. After the war he was an intelligence officer in Alaska and on the staff of the Commander, Fleet Activities, Japan, spent two years in Washington with the Central Intelligence Agency, and ended his career as chief of staff of the Sixth Naval District at Charleston, South Carolina. He died at seventy-four.
He was born on 15 May 1903 in Kansas. The Naval Academy's 1927 Lucky Bag gives his home as Leavenworth and says that he spent his "pre-Academy days attending the Leavenworth Grammar and High schools." The sources examined here do not name his parents, describe his family, or say how he came to be appointed to the Naval Academy.
The yearbook sketch calls him "Gene." It is the portrait of a good student who did not worry about his marks and a young man who was well liked by girls, and who walked off extra duty on Saturday nights. "His preparation for the Naval Academy was very thorough," the writers say, "and after passing the entrance exams, he had little trouble in keeping his academic work and standing of the best." His scholastic efforts, they add, "have been surpassed only by his popularity with that so-interesting, much-discussed fair sex," and they give a pet phrase to prove it: "What! Only four letters for me today?" In his first-class year he "exhibited a penchant for walking," and the "Crossed Gun and Shoes" award, they thought, should be his. They record the dialogue that went with it: "Going to the hop, Saturday night, Gene?" "Yeah, if I can get this extra duty walked off." The sketch closes on optimism: "There was never a misfortune that could keep Gene down for long. He is always cheerful and optimistic, sure of himself and the rightness of the world."
He graduated in June 1927, at the age of twenty-four, and was commissioned an ensign. The Navy Directories trace his first years at sea. In 1928 and 1929 he was in the cruiser Omaha. In 1930 he was in the destroyers Farquhar and Twiggs, and in 1931 again in the Twiggs, listed as a lieutenant (junior grade). That year he also appears assigned to the 16th Naval District. In 1932 he was in the destroyer McCormick and, from the later 1932 issues through 1933, in the Pillsbury. In 1934 he was at the 12th Naval District. In 1935 he was an instructor at the Naval Academy, and by the second half of 1935 he was at the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Florida, where the directories keep him through 1937. In late 1937 and 1938 he was in the tender Beaver, and in 1939 the directory lists him as commanding the minesweeper Seagull. By 1940 he was in the battleship Nevada; the directories of 1940 and early 1941 place him there as a lieutenant. Uboat.net records his promotion to lieutenant on 30 June 1936 and to lieutenant commander on 1 January 1942.
The Washington Post's obituary adds that he returned to the Naval Academy as an instructor in ordnance in 1941. The sources examined here do not say whether he trained as a naval aviator at Pensacola or as something else, and they do not give a marriage date. They name his wife, Mildred.
He was forty when the Conner (DD-582) was commissioned. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships gives the occasion in one line: launched 18 July 1942 at the Boston Navy Yard, sponsored by Miss T. L. Conner, and commissioned 8 June 1943, "Lieutenant Commander W. E. Kaitner in command." Uboat.net dates his promotion to temporary commander from 10 September 1942. She reached Pearl Harbor from the East Coast on 19 September 1943 and joined the task force for the raid on Wake Island on 5 and 6 October.
The ship's history follows her through the carrier war. In November 1943 she went out from Pearl Harbor for the Gilberts, screening carriers and protecting the assault shipping as it unloaded. On 8 December she bombarded Nauru. She screened air strikes on Kavieng from Efate and joined the great carrier Task Force 58 at Funafuti on 21 January 1944. Between 23 January and 26 February she took part in the Marshalls assaults: Kwajalein, Majuro, and the February raids on Truk and the Marianas. After a convoy to Pearl Harbor she returned for the raids on the Palaus, Yap, Ulithi and Woleai at the turn of March and April, bombarded the New Guinea coast before the Hollandia landings, and went back to the carriers for Truk, Satawan and Ponape.
In June 1944 she screened the carriers for the preliminary strikes on Saipan, Tinian and Guam and the raids in the Bonins from 12 to 16 June. She was still on the screen for the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June, and at the end of the action, the history says, she "acted as rescue ship for the carrier planes as they returned from their extreme range strikes on the retiring Japanese fleet." Then Iwo Jima, on 23 and 24 June and 3 and 4 July. After repairs at Eniwetok she put to sea with a carrier group from 29 August to 28 September, screening strikes on the Palaus, Yap, Ulithi, Mindanao and the Visayans, and covering the landings on Morotai.
The ship's autumn reached its peak off Formosa. On 13 October, the history says, "in a furious attack by Japanese aircraft, Canberra (CA-70) was torpedoed, and Conner protected the damaged cruiser as she left the action area, splashing several enemy planes which tried to finish Canberra off." She rejoined the carriers for strikes on Luzon and Yap and screened them during the battle of Surigao Strait on 25 and 26 October. She remained in the Philippines, patrolling the Camote Sea and Ormoc Bay against Japanese shipping and covering the Mindoro landings until she put in at Manus on 23 December. She patrolled the entrance to Lingayen Gulf during the landings of 9 and 10 January 1945 and cleared on 29 January for overhaul at Puget Sound.
Kaitner's command ended on 18 February 1945, while the ship was in the yard. He was forty-one. Uboat.net records his advancement to temporary captain on 10 March 1945, three weeks later. The Conner returned to Leyte in May without him: she guarded minesweepers and demolition teams at Brunei Bay in June, supported the Australian landings at Balikpapan in July, and on 2 August stopped and took as a prize a Japanese hospital ship, the Tachibana Maru, found with contraband and troops aboard. All of that happened under another captain.
His next post was the cruiser Los Angeles, in which he served as executive officer. The university archive that holds his papers describes a photograph of the commissioning ceremony of the Los Angeles in 1945 and a charcoal sketch of the ship by Arthur Beaumont, and the Washington Post confirms the posting. The sources examined here do not give the dates of his tour in her.
The sources examined here give no award citation and no action report written by him. The Conner earned twelve battle stars in the Second World War, according to the ship's history. No medal for Kaitner personally appears in the records found.
According to the Post, he served after the war as an intelligence officer in Alaska and on the staff of the Commander, Fleet Activities, in Japan. From 1950 to 1952 he worked in Washington with the Central Intelligence Agency, and the paper says he lived in the Washington area in the early 1950s. From 1954 until his retirement in 1957 he was chief of staff to the commander of the Sixth Naval District in Charleston, South Carolina. He retired as a rear admiral, at the age of fifty-three or fifty-four; the date of his retirement within 1957 is not given.
He died on Friday, 21 October 1977, of cancer, at the Bay Pines Veterans Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was seventy-four. His wife, Mildred, of St. Petersburg, survived him, with two daughters, Joan Lyon of Cold Spring Harbor, New York, and Patricia Dyer of Jacksonville, Florida, and six grandchildren. The sources examined here do not give the place of burial.
His papers survive at the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming, in six boxes, 3.7 cubic feet, dated 1927–1977. The finding aid lists a notebook of Navy telegrams from 1943 to 1945, a notebook of his orders from 1927 to 1957, further telegrams to 1957, one letter, photographs of the Conner and of the Los Angeles's commissioning, uniforms, certificates and citations, and the Beaumont sketch.
What remains in the sources examined here is a yearbook sketch of a cheerful Kansas midshipman who walked off his extra duty, a twenty-year trail of ships and stations, the long carrier-screen war of the Conner with a captain whose name appears at the commissioning and no more, and the ordinary details of a retirement in Florida. His own voice is in the boxes at Laramie and not in the sources examined here.