Ships
- USS Wadleigh (DD-689) Captain, 19 October 1943 – 16 February 1945
Walter Coulter Winn, a commander in the United States Navy, was the first captain of the destroyer Wadleigh (DD-689). He took command when the ship was commissioned on 19 October 1943 and remained her commanding officer until 16 February 1945. Wadleigh was a Fletcher-class destroyer built at Bath, Maine, and named for Rear Admiral George H. Wadleigh. Winn's first job was to make a new hull and a new crew into a working ship of the fleet.
After commissioning, Wadleigh carried out shakedown training in the Atlantic and returned for corrections found at sea. Early in 1944 she passed through the Panama Canal and reported at Pearl Harbor. Winn then took her into the fast carrier force, the formation of fleet carriers and their screening ships that was carrying the Pacific war westward.
In late March and early April 1944, Wadleigh screened the carriers during strikes on the Palau Islands, Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai. Later that month she covered the landings at Hollandia on New Guinea, then joined the raid on Truk and the follow-up strikes in the Carolines. In June she went north for the Marianas campaign. She screened the force at the landings on Saipan and during the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June 1944, when carrier aircraft turned back the Japanese fleet sent to defend the islands. She stayed with the operation through the fighting for Guam.
In the first half of September 1944, Wadleigh went with the fast carriers against the Palaus and against airfields in the Philippines, then joined the assault on Peleliu. On 16 September, while she was screening minesweepers in the approaches to the island, she struck a mine. The explosion tore off her bow. Three of her men were killed, and others were wounded. Damage control kept the ship afloat, and she cleared the mined water with Winn still in command.
Temporary repairs at a forward base allowed Wadleigh to continue to Pearl Harbor and then to a shipyard on the West Coast, where a new bow was built onto the hull. The reconstruction occupied the winter of 1944-1945. Winn's command ended on 16 February 1945, during that long repair. In the sixteen months he had the ship, he commissioned her, took her through the central Pacific carrier campaign from the Carolines to the Marianas and the Philippines, and brought the crew through the mining off Peleliu.