Ships
- USS Harrison (DD-573) Captain from 27 April 1944
The Navy's books do not. The officer who is in them as a lieutenant (junior grade) on Canopus, as the commanding officer the Silver Star citation names on Harrison, and as a rear admiral still on the active list on 1 January 1970 is Walter Vincent Combs, Jr., United States Naval Academy class of 1936, file number 77017. The list's line is his. The "Jr." is not optional. A senior Walter Vincent Combs, a lieutenant commander, sits on the retired list of the same registers, at an Ontario, California, address in the years the midshipman was growing up in that town. He is not the Harrison captain. Charles Edward McCombs is a third man, an ensign in the 1933 register and a commander later, and he is not this one either. John Barr Colwell and Emmett Mobley Compton are the names on either side of the list line. They are not him.
What follows is the life the registers, the Navy Directory, the Lucky Bag, the ship's histories, and the award citations will support. Where a compiled list of captains gives a day the books do not, the day is not used.
Origins
He was born on 27 March 1914. That date is in the Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of 1 July 1940, in the date-of-birth column on the lieutenants (junior grade) page, on the line that belongs to Walter Vincent Combs, Jr., signal number 5523. The same page gives the state of birth as New York and the state of entry as "At large." The date of entry on that line is 9 June 1932, marked with the dagger the footnote explains: commissioned ensign 4 June 1936. The birth date is still beside his name on 1 July 1942, 1 July 1944, 1 January 1960, and 1 January 1970.
The Lucky Bag of 1936 heads his page "Walter Vincent Combs, Jr." and, above the name, "Ontario, California." The classmates call him Vince. The yearbook is not a birth certificate, and Ontario is not New York. The two places are both in the record. Nothing in the registers says when the family moved, or whether he was brought west as a child or only claimed the town when he went to Annapolis.
The Navy Directory does put a man of the identical name in that town. On 1 July 1936 and again on 1 April 1937 the retired-list pages give Lieutenant Commander Walter V. Combs at 322 West E Street, Ontario, California, Eleventh Naval District. By 1 January 1939, 1 June 1940, and 1 April 1941 the same retired officer is at West 23d Street, Upland, California, the next town over. The registers retire him on 7 October 1921. In the 1 July 1940 and 1 July 1942 books the law column on his line is "I, T." In that volume's key, I is retirement for incapacity resulting from an incident of the service, under Revised Statutes section 1453, and T is an officer holding a permanent commission who was retired in the rank in which he had temporarily served, under the act of 22 May 1917 or the act of 4 March 1925. His sea service in those books is 8 years and 11 months. No active service since retirement is printed. The directories list him at home, not on a ship.
The books never say that the retired lieutenant commander was the father of the midshipman. They say "Jr.," they put both men in the same small California town, and they keep their service records apart. That is as far as the paper goes. No mother is named. No brother or sister is named. No wife and no child turned up in the registers, the directories, or an obituary. A UCLA Library catalog record, carried on Calisphere, is titled as a 1936 photograph of the Titus sisters, Kathleen and Renata, on the beach at Newport with Navy ensigns Walter Combs Jr. and Charles Eisenbach. Eisenbach is the classmate who stands next to him in the registers. The photograph itself was not opened. The title is a caption, not a marriage.
Formation
He entered the Naval Academy on 9 June 1932, appointed at large, in the class that would graduate in 1936. The Register of 1 January 1934 still has him as a midshipman, "Walter Vincent Combs, jr," entered 9 June 1932, at large. The Lucky Bag sketch, written by the class and not by a biographer, is the only portrait of him before the Navy started listing ships.
The activities line is plain: wrestling in third-class year, the Ring Committee, expert rifleman, the Radio Club in first-class year, two stripes. The prose is the usual classmate verdict, and it is quoted as that, not as a log. They say that in four years by the bay he was one of them; that he took the academics with few misgivings and kept them off, even after a hard bout with "Dago," which in that book's slang is the Spanish course; that he threw early habits aside and changed, about second-class summer, from a "confirmed red mike" into one of the social leaders of the First Battalion, and had been "snaking" ever since. A red mike, in Academy talk of that decade, was the midshipman who did not go after women. Snaking was the opposite. They give him a happy-go-lucky air that was hard to shake, a calm and pleasant manner in every situation, and an anger "as righteous as it is rare." The last line is a blessing they had no way to keep: "Vince's road will be a smooth one." California, they wrote, had given them a real son, a true friend, and a helping classmate.
He was commissioned ensign on 4 June 1936. The 1 July 1940 register's footnote is the cleanest statement of that day. The Register of 1 January 1952 and the Register of 1 January 1960 both carry 4 June 1936 in the commission-date position on his line. The Navy Directory of 1 July 1936, the same summer, has Ensign Walter V. Combs, Jr., on the battleship Colorado. The Directory of 1 April 1937 still has him there, still an ensign. The Register of 1 July 1936 prints the same ship beside signal number 6357.
Between April 1937 and the summer of 1938 he left the battleship for a destroyer. The Register of 1 July 1938 has Ensign Walter Vincent Combs, Jr., signal 5774, on Balch. The Navy Directory of 1 January 1939 still has him an ensign on Balch. No directory read for this essay gives the day he reported, or what billet he held. Balch was a destroyer. He was a junior officer on her. That is all the station line says.
His date of rank as lieutenant (junior grade) is 4 June 1939, printed in full at the head of his block in the Register of 1 July 1940 and carried by ditto to his name. The Directory of 1 June 1940 has caught the rank and changed the ship. He is a lieutenant (junior grade) on Canopus.
On the facing page of that 1940 register, the service columns for his line read: present cruise begun 25 January 1940; last cruise expired June 1939; sea service in rank, 0 years and 5 months; total sea service, 3 years and 9 months. The Register of 1 July 1941, which had dropped the station column, still prints 25 January 1940 and June 1939 beside his name, and still calls him a lieutenant (junior grade) from 4 June 1939. The Navy Directory of 1 April 1941, the last directory before the war shut that series down, still has Lieutenant (junior grade) Walter V. Combs, Jr., on Canopus.
Canopus (AS-9) was not a destroyer and not a fighting ship in the ordinary sense. She was a submarine tender, in the Philippines with the Asiatic Fleet since 1924, summers at Tsingtao, and on 8 December 1941, west of the date line, lying at Cavite Navy Yard as tender to Submarine Squadron 20. That is the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, not a muster roll. The directory places Combs on her in June 1940 and still in April 1941. It does not place him on her in December. What the tender then lived through is part of the question of where he was, and it is told here as the ship's history, with that limit stated in the open.
DANFS sends her, aging but able, through the raids on Cavite, her men repairing damaged ships and keeping the submarines at sea, then out of Manila on Christmas Day 1941 to Mariveles Bay at the tip of Bataan. Direct bomb hits on 29 December 1941 and 1 January 1942 damaged her and injured thirteen of her men. She was smoked by day so as to look like a hulk, and she worked by night. The last submarine left her around the New Year. Her people went into an improvised naval battalion on Bataan, and her launches were turned into small gunboats. On the surrender of Bataan, 9 April 1942, she was ordered scuttled. On 10 April her own men backed her off into deep water and sank her. She received one battle star, for the Philippine Islands operation from 8 December 1941 to 9 April 1942.
No casualty list, no prisoner list, and no deck log read for this essay puts Walter Vincent Combs, Jr., on her for any of those days. The next register that speaks of his movements is 1 July 1942. He is by then a lieutenant. On the lieutenants' left-hand page his permanent rank is lieutenant from 1 January 1942, the date printed for the block and dittoed through signal 5209, his line. On the facing page the line whose birth date is 27 March 1914 still shows a cruise begun in January 1940 and a previous cruise expired in June 1939. The book had not recorded a new shore duty or a new cruise. Whether that means he was still in the Asiatic tour, or only that the station column was gone and the old dates had not been rewritten, the register itself does not say.
By 1 July 1943 the Register lists him as a lieutenant commander. The distinction printed after his name is "(I)." The key of that volume says (I) means a special letter of commendation by the Navy Department for war service. The letter was not found. The Register of 1 July 1944, on the lieutenant commanders' page that contains him, signal 5013, prints "(H-1)" after the name. In the key of 1 July 1944 and again in the key of 1 July 1945, (H-1) is a special letter of commendation with authority to wear the commendation ribbon. On that 1944 page the date of temporary rank is printed once, 1 May 1943, and carried by ditto through his line. No later temporary-rank date is printed on the page before him. His permanent rank in that block is lieutenant, 1 January 1942, also by the dittos of the page. The commendation is the first wartime distinction the registers attach to his name. They do not say for what.
War years as lived
The site's page says Commander Walter Vincent Combs took command of Harrison (DD-573) on 27 April 1944. Compiled lists of her captains say the same day, and they run him to February 1946. The Register of 1 July 1944 still has him a lieutenant commander. DANFS never names him. No deck log and no change-of-command report was found. The April 1944 day is not used. Neither is any cruise of Harrison before the day a citation puts him on her bridge.
That day is 6 April 1945. The citation, as printed by the Military Times Hall of Valor from Commander First Carrier Task Force, Pacific, serial 0459 of 26 April 1945, says the President took pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Commander Walter Vincent Combs, Jr., Navy service number 0-77017, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity as commanding officer of the destroyer Harrison in action against Japanese forces off Okinawa Shima on 6 April 1945. Attacked by two enemy suicide planes, he directed a skillful defense and succeeded in shooting down both, despite damage to one of his guns. The citation's judgment is courage, leadership, and a material contribution to the ship's operation. It does not name the gun. It does not say whether anyone on Harrison was killed or wounded. It does not say where in the screen she was.
DANFS tells the same morning from the ship's side, and does not use his name. During the Okinawa operation Harrison "began to experience increasing kamikaze attacks." Her gunners "accounted for two of the suicide planes" on 6 April, and she protected the carriers through the attacks that followed the invasion. The history and the citation are the same two planes. One credits the gunners. The other credits the commanding officer's direction of the defense, and records that a gun was hit and still the planes came down.
The Register of 1 July 1945, whose key uses (E) for the Silver Star and (G-1) for the Bronze Star, prints only (H-1) after his name. The April recommendation had not yet become a symbol in that book. The citation is not discarded for that. Awards lagged the register. The symbol that is present is the older commendation ribbon.
Between 6 April and the next citation, DANFS keeps the ship and loses the man. She was back at Ulithi on 30 April, underway again on 9 May for tactical support of the forces ashore on Okinawa, the task force by then part of the Third Fleet, with periodic strikes against Japan. On 5 June she rode out the typhoon in which Pittsburgh lost her bow. The ships put into Leyte Gulf on 11 June to repair damage. Nothing in the citations says he was detached in those weeks. Nothing in DANFS says he was still aboard on 5 June. The track is the ship's. It is told because the next citation finds him still her captain, and no relief is recorded in between.
On 1 July the task force moved toward Japan again. The Bronze Star citation, also as printed by the Hall of Valor, is for heroic service as commanding officer of Harrison, attached to Destroyer Squadron Twenty-Five, against Japanese forces in the vicinity of the home islands from 1 July to 15 August 1945. He is a commander in this citation as in the other. The text says he took part in numerous carrier strikes against Honshu and Hokkaido and in high-speed anti-shipping sweeps along the shores of Honshu, and that he contributed materially to the success of the forces. It then names one act as his: he directed his ship in a penetration thirty miles into enemy-held Suruga Wan, on Honshu, to attack hostile shipping and railway and manufacturing objectives. He is authorized the Combat "V."
DANFS puts a date and a picture on that penetration, again without his name. During the night of 30–31 July, Harrison and the rest of her squadron swept Suruga Wan, near Tokyo, "in the very shadow of Mount Fujiyama," and bombarded railroad yards and an aluminum plant. The same paragraphs record a separate sweep, Harrison with four cruisers and five other destroyers along the northern coast of Honshu, that gained not one contact, which the history reads as evidence of how thoroughly surface ships and submarines had already cleared the coast. The citation's "thirty miles" and its shipping, railway, and manufacturing targets are the Navy's description of what he directed. The history's night of 30–31 July, the railroad yards, the aluminum plant, and the mountain are the ship's. They are the same bay. They are not worded as the same sentence, and they are not forced into one.
Task Force 38 kept at Japan until the surrender on 15 August. That is the last day the Bronze Star citation covers. DANFS then sends Harrison to Guam on 26 August, Pearl Harbor on 14 September, Boston on 17 October, Charleston on 3 November, and decommissioning on 1 April 1946. The history does not name the captain on any of those days. A compiled list ends his command in February 1946 and gives the ship to a Lieutenant Commander James Mahoney until the decommissioning. Those dates were not found in a log. The voyage home and the laying up are not told as his.
What he had been, in the months the citations do own, was a destroyer captain on the carrier screen: two suicide planes on 6 April, a gun damaged and both planes shot down, then the long July and August off the home islands, the empty sweep to the north, and a night run thirty miles into Suruga Wan under the mountain to shoot at a railway and a plant. The Lucky Bag had promised him a smooth road. The citations are the Navy's measured disagreement.
Cost
The Silver Star's cost, as the paper records it, is one gun damaged and two aircraft destroyed, and whatever it took to stand on that bridge and keep the battery shooting. No figure for Harrison's dead or wounded on 6 April 1945 was found in the citation or in DANFS. The omission is not read as a claim that nobody was hurt.
The Bronze Star's sweep along northern Honshu found nothing to sink. The history offers that emptiness as the result of a war already won at sea. The night in Suruga Wan was the opposite choice, a destroyer squadron in a bay the enemy still held, close under Fuji, firing at shore targets. The citation calls it daring. It does not say what the bombardment did to the yards or the plant, or what came back.
The earlier commendation is a cost of a different kind. By 1 July 1943 the Navy had already given him a letter for war service, and by 1945 it had not told, in any source found here, what the service was. If he was still on Canopus when she was bombed at Mariveles and scuttled on 10 April 1942, that letter may be the trace of Bataan, and the July 1942 register's unrevised January 1940 cruise date may be a clerk's failure to close the tour of a man who had lost his ship. If he had left the tender before the war, the same letter is something else, and the Bataan story belongs to other men. Both readings fit the paper. Neither is adopted.
The retired lieutenant commander in Ontario had already paid an older bill. He left the active list on 7 October 1921 for incapacity from an incident of the service, in a temporary rank made permanent by the retirement statutes. Eight years and eleven months at sea, and then West E Street, and then Upland. If he was the boy's father, the son grew up in the house of an officer the Navy had already retired as broken by the service. The registers do not say "father." They are not asked to.
No wife, no children, and no obituary were found. What the war took from a household cannot be counted from an empty column.
After
The wartime rank and the postwar rank are not the same line. On 1 July 1944 he was a temporary lieutenant commander from the dittoed 1 May 1943, permanently a lieutenant from 1 January 1942. The 1945 citations call him commander. The Register of 1 January 1952 lists Walter Vincent Combs, Jr., as a commander, and the date group printed with that rank, in the same order as the classmates next to him, is 15 March 1944, with birth 27 March 1914 and 4 June 1936 in the commission position. A commander's date of 15 March 1944 sits three and a half months before a register that still listed him as a lieutenant commander. The later book may be a readjusted date of rank. It is not allowed to overwrite the July 1944 list. He was a commander by 6 April 1945 because the citation says so. The day he put the rank on is not settled.
The Register of 1 January 1960 has him on the line captains' list, designator 1100, with 1 September 1954 in the present-rank date position, the same day printed for John Morris Alford and Fred Groch Bennett on that page. Birth is again 27 March 1914. The Register of 1 January 1970 has him among the rear admirals of the unrestricted line, designator 1100, with 1 July 1964 in the date-of-rank position and the same birth date. He was still on the active list that New Year's Day.
The later citations, again as printed by the Hall of Valor and not from the bureau's original files, are the only account of what those ranks were for.
From June 1964 to July 1966 he was Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower, and the Legion of Merit says he had a major part in the guidance and monitoring of the manpower buildup for the Southeast Asia contingency. It names him senior member of a board on billet requirements and grade distribution in the Navy's subspecialties, and then as the officer who directed planning and implementation of a civilian substitution program. The citation is about desks, numbers, and careers. It is not about a ship.
From June to November 1967 a Gold Star in lieu of a second Legion of Merit, with the Combat "V," Board serial 9977 of 16 November 1967, places him as Commander Cruiser-Destroyer Flotilla Three and Commander Cruiser-Destroyer Group, Seventh Fleet. The citation says he was responsible for the training, readiness, and use of all cruiser and destroyer units of the Seventh Fleet while those ships were heavily committed in Southeast Asia, that he pushed tactical doctrine and issued revised plans, and that the forces' effectiveness was his direction. It does not name a battle, a day of fire, or a ship he rode. A reunion page for Allen M. Sumner prints what it says is a message from Rear Admiral W. V. Combs praising that destroyer for Sea Dragon and the gun line. The page is not an archive. The message is not used.
From February 1968 to August 1970 the Navy Distinguished Service Medal citation has him as Commander Service Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, principal logistic agent for the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, and type commander of the operational logistic force. It says he kept supplies moving to naval forces across the Pacific, to Free World forces in the I Corps Tactical Zone in Vietnam, and to other naval forces in that country; that under tighter budgets he changed management procedures and took part in base restructuring; that he worked on Vietnamization; and that he went out to the subordinate commands to see them and to be seen. The tour runs past the 1 January 1970 register, which still carries him as a rear admiral on active duty, and it ends in August 1970. No register successfully read for this essay shows the retirement. The month he left the Navy was not found.
The Hall of Valor gives his home as Townsend, Washington, and his death as 19 July 2001. An unsourced commanders' list puts the death at Bellevue, Washington. No obituary was found to choose between them, or to name who was in the room. Townsend is used as the home the medal compilation prints. The place of death is not.
He had gone from an ensign on Colorado in the summer of 1936 to a rear admiral in charge of the Pacific Fleet's supplies at the end of another war. The Lucky Bag line about a smooth road is still just a classmate's hope. The citations, from two planes off Okinawa to a logistic command thirty-five years later, are what the Navy was willing to write down. The household he left, if there was one, is not in them.