Ships
- USS Topeka (CL-67) Captain from 7 November 1945 · Relieved on 24 July 1946
Walter Gabriel Schindler had Topeka (CL-67) from 7 November 1945 to 24 July 1946 on the NavSource list. He took her through the overhaul at San Pedro and out to the occupation. The Navy already knew him as the dive-bomber gunner who came home from the Coral Sea with the Navy Cross. NavSource prints his name as Walter Gabriel J. Schindler and his final rank as vice admiral. The name used here drops the initial, which his biography does not use.
He was born on 10 December 1897 in New Glarus, Wisconsin, to S. A. Schindler and Anna Schindler. His father served in the Wisconsin State Assembly and was Deputy State Treasurer at his death. Walter graduated from St. John's Military Academy in Delafield in the summer of 1916 and spent a year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He died on 3 April 1991 in Sarasota, Florida, aged 93. The page names his first wife, Flora B. Streiff, who died in 1944 at the age of 44, and his second wife, Mary Arline Steen, with the years 1908–1984, and also says he was survived by that second wife.
He was appointed to the Naval Academy in June 1917. He ran track, worked on the Lucky Bag, and was an expert rifleman. In the summer of 1918 he served as a midshipman in Missouri with the Atlantic Fleet. He was graduated on 3 June 1921 and commissioned ensign that day. The class of 1921 is the Lucky Bag cited on the page. He went to Tennessee in the Pacific Fleet until June 1924, when he was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) and transferred to the destroyer Robert Smith. In May 1927 he was promoted to lieutenant and sent to the Naval Postgraduate School at Annapolis for ordnance engineering, then to the Washington Navy Yard for torpedo instruction, finished in May 1930. He rejoined Tennessee until March 1933, then the Bureau of Ordnance under Rear Admiral Harold R. Stark, and completed the Naval War College correspondence course in strategy and tactics. After two years he went to the Asiatic Fleet in Whipple (DD-217), flagship of Destroyer Division 13, off the Philippines and China, and assumed his first command at sea, the minesweeper Finch. The page's command list gives her hull as AM-9. Promoted to lieutenant commander in June 1937, he was gunnery officer of Augusta, flagship of Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, and commander of Mine Division 3, until May 1940. He then returned to the Bureau of Ordnance under Rear Admiral William R. Furlong, in the fire-control section.
In July 1941, a newly promoted commander, he became gunnery and training officer on the staff of Commander, Cruisers, Scouting Force, under Rear Admiral John H. Newton. After Pearl Harbor the staff served under Rear Admiral Frank J. Fletcher. The command became Commander, Cruisers, Pacific Fleet, Task Force 17. It escorted Marines to Samoa in January 1942 and took part in the Marshalls-Gilberts raids and the Salamaua-Lae raid. At Tulagi on 3 and 4 May he volunteered as a free gunner in Scouting Squadron 5 for three attacks. At the Coral Sea he flew again as a free gunner, in a Douglas SBD with Swede Vejtasa, in the attack that sank the light carrier Shoho, and filmed the action. On 8 May he flew as gunner with Lieutenant Turner F. Caldwell Jr. in the attack on Shokaku and claimed a Zero. The page awards him the Navy Cross for the Coral Sea and calls him the first American to have shot down a Zero from the rear seat of a Navy dive bomber. He was at Midway on 4–7 June, at Tulagi and Guadalcanal on 7–9 August, and at the Eastern Solomons on 24–25 August. He was temporary captain from 20 June 1942. After Fletcher left in November 1942 he was chief of staff to Rear Admiral DeWitt C. Ramsey in Task Force 11, and he stayed in that post under Rear Admiral Willis Augustus Lee for the occupation of Baker Island. The page also gives him the Silver Star and a Navy Commendation Ribbon for Pacific service.
He came home in November 1943, served a few weeks in the Twelfth Naval District under Vice Admiral John W. Greenslade, and then became officer in charge of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory until October 1945. The page credits him with the mines used in the Pacific war and with pushing the White Oak plant, and it awards a Legion of Merit for that duty. Early in November 1945 he was ordered to San Pedro and assumed command of Topeka, which had just come in from the Pacific. NavSource dates that command from 7 November 1945. He supervised the overhaul and sailed for Japan in early January 1946, reaching Yokosuka before the end of the month. DANFS has the same sailing, on 3 January, and the arrival on 24 January. The page says the ship then patrolled Japanese and Chinese waters and that he returned to the United States in July. NavSource relieves him on 24 July 1946. DANFS keeps the ship in the Far East until the fall and brings her to San Pedro on 20 November, under the next captain on the NavSource list.
He attended the National War College from September 1946 to June 1947, served in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, and then went to Valparaíso as chief of the naval mission. He was promoted to rear admiral on 1 July 1948. In December 1949 he became Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance for Research, deputy to Vice Admiral Albert G. Noble, until the end of July 1950, when he returned to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory as commanding officer. In July 1952 he took Cruiser Division 3: the heavy cruiser Bremerton and the destroyers Allen M. Sumner, Moale, Purdy, and Ingraham. The page describes bombardments on the east coast of Korea, including Kojo, and a second Legion of Merit with Combat "V." From August 1953 he was Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Fleet Operations and Readiness under Admiral Robert Carney. In October 1955 he commanded United States Naval Forces Germany at Heidelberg, the last officer in that command, which was disbanded in July 1957. He then commanded the Eighth Naval District at New Orleans until 1 October 1959, retired after 42 years, and was advanced to vice admiral on the retired list for combat commendation. In retirement he founded Project Alert, served the Navy League, and was a national commissioner of the Freedoms Foundation.