Ships
- USS Caperton (DD-650) Captain, 30 July 1943 – 27 August 1944
Commander Wallace Joseph Miller was born in Kentucky on 27 November 1903 and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1926. He was promoted to lieutenant on 30 June 1936 and to lieutenant commander on 1 May 1941. On 15 August 1942 he received a temporary promotion to commander.
On 30 July 1943 he became the first commanding officer of Caperton, a Fletcher-class destroyer built at Bath Iron Works in Maine. The hull had been laid down on 11 January 1943 and launched on 22 May. The ship was commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard and joined Destroyer Division 100 of Destroyer Squadron 50. Miller took her through fitting out and into her first training at sea.
From the middle of August until early October 1943, Caperton completed shakedown off the Atlantic coast. She sailed from Boston on 8 October, passed the Panama Canal on 17 October, and arrived at Pearl Harbor on 6 November. Late that month she carried explosives south to Funafuti in the Ellice Islands, and on 27 November her crew crossed the equator. She then patrolled in support of the Gilbert Islands campaign until she returned to Pearl Harbor on 8 January 1944.
At Pearl Harbor the destroyer joined the screen of Task Force 58, the fast carrier force. On 30 January 1944 she took part in the bombardment of Kwajalein alongside the battleships Washington, Indiana, and Massachusetts and the rest of her division. Working from Majuro, she screened the February carrier attacks on Truk, including the raid that began when the force left the atoll on 12 February, and the strike on Saipan on 21 and 22 February.
In March Caperton left Espiritu Santo to cover the landings on Emirau in the Bismarck Archipelago, then screened air attacks on Palau, Yap, Woleai, and Ulithi. In April, with Task Group 58.3, she supported the Hollandia and Aitape landings on New Guinea, covered a second series of strikes on Truk, and took part in the bombardment of Satawan and Ponape.
On 6 June 1944 she sortied from Majuro for the Marianas campaign and stayed with that operation through 22 July. She screened carriers during the landings on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam and during strikes on Rota, Pagan, and Guam. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June she remained with the carrier screen and fired on Japanese aircraft that reached the American formation. She also joined the shore bombardment and the anti-shipping sweep off Guam. Miller left Caperton on 27 August 1944.
George Kennedy Carmichael relieved him that day and commanded the destroyer until 12 July 1945. Will Park Starnes then had her through the close of the war and until 7 July 1946. Miller’s tour had covered the ship’s commissioning and her first year in the Pacific, from the Gilberts and Marshalls through the central Pacific carrier raids and the Battle of the Philippine Sea.