Pacific ships

USN · Lieutenant

Pendleton, Walton Barclay

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Walton Barclay Pendleton was commanding officer of the minesweeper Tern at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and later commanding officer of the destroyer escort England during the antisubmarine patrol for which he received the Navy Cross. Hall of Valor records that he was born on 24 November 1897 and died on 9 December 1970, that he was a member of the Naval Academy class of 1921, and that he retired as a captain. NavSource lists him as a commander when he commissioned England, and gives his home as Globe, Arizona.

The birth date is the one Hall of Valor prints. It does not name a birthplace, parents, or brothers and sisters. Globe, Arizona, appears on NavSource's England page as the place associated with him, not as a proven birthplace. He is not Perley Earl Pendleton, and he is not Jack Pendleton Monroe. Nothing in the sources used here describes his childhood or how he came to the Naval Academy.

NavSource's Tern page and Hall of Valor both record the Naval Academy class of 1921. The class year is not a rank. No register entry used here gives his sea duty between graduation and 1939, the date NavSource starts his command of Tern. On that page he is a lieutenant, United States Navy, in command from June 1939 to 1 April 1943, with the Navy Cross noted and retirement as a captain noted. The Navy Cross belongs to his later command of England, not to the Tern years. June 1939 is the month NavSource prints. It does not give the day.

Tern had been a Pacific Fleet train ship for two decades. She returned to Pearl Harbor with Train Squadron 2 on 19 June 1941, two years into the command NavSource gives him. The ship's history does not say whether he brought her out from the West Coast or joined her in Hawaii.

On 7 December 1941 Tern was not in the minesweeper nest at the Coal Dock. Pendleton's report of 15 December says she was alongside the north end of Ten Ten Dock, in upkeep by the repair ship Argonne, with the work planned to finish at the end of the working day on 9 December. All of her machinery was dead. Steam, water, and electricity were coming from the dock. The report is written from the commanding officer and is signed W. B. Pendleton. It does not say he was ashore. It does say that Boatswain J. A. Hein had the deck when the attack opened, and that Hein got the ship off the dock and into the stream in what the report calls record time.

The ship was told of the attack at 0753. At 0805 the .30-caliber Lewis guns opened fire. The 3-inch guns could not bear, because Tern was heading east and Argonne blanked them. A plane she was firing at was seen to go down by the Officers' Club. The report records that the plane went down. It does not say Tern shot it down. At 0815 the yard cut off lights, air, and steam, and the men worked by flashlight. She was underway from dead firerooms in one hour and forty minutes. At 0943 she picked up forty-seven survivors in the harbor. At 1050 she went to the fire on Arizona, then was sent to West Virginia by orders from Maryland. The report says Commander Hamilton put Tern's commanding officer in charge of the firefighting on West Virginia, acting on orders from Maryland. The fire on West Virginia was out at 1430 on 8 December. Tern went back to Arizona, and that fire was out at 1235 on 9 December.

She then fueled from the oiler Ramapo to 95 percent and, on orders from the Commander Base Force, lay alongside Nevada. On 10 December she was released, went to the Coal Docks, was sent to California that evening, and came back with Turkey alongside because Turkey's steering gear had jammed. Pendleton reported no losses, no damage, and no casualties. He commended Ensign H. J. Perry of the Naval Reserve, who had been in the Navy only a short time, and he commended Hein and ten named enlisted men. Perry is not identified in these sources as Pendleton's relief. The later Tern captain of that surname is Lieutenant Herbert James Perry, Jr., of the regular Navy, who took command on 1 April 1943, the day Pendleton's tour ended. The sources do not say the two Perrys were one man.

Under Pendleton, Tern towed a fuel-oil barge to Johnston Island on 9 January 1942 and delivered it on the 13th. She reached Bora Bora, which the ship's history prints as Borabora, on 18 February and became station ship. On 1 June 1942 she was redesignated the ocean tug AT-142. She stayed in the Society Islands until Advent relieved her on 2 January 1943, reached Pearl Harbor on 27 January, and then headed for an overhaul at San Pedro, California. Pendleton was relieved on 1 April 1943, before Tern is recorded back at Pearl Harbor on 23 May. What he did between April and December 1943 is not in the sources used here.

NavSource's England page says the destroyer escort was commissioned on 10 December 1943 with Commander W. B. Pendleton in command, and lists Commander Walton Barclay Pendleton, class of 1921, of Globe, Arizona, from that day until 30 August 1944. Hall of Valor's Navy Cross citation styles him a lieutenant commander, commanding officer of England, for an antisubmarine patrol in the Bismarck Archipelago from 18 to 31 May 1944. In that fortnight, the citation says, his ship contacted, tracked, and probably destroyed five Japanese submarines, and was largely responsible for the probable sinking of a sixth. It credits his seamanship and his direction of the attacks. It does not name the submarines, and it does not say the sinkings were later confirmed. The difference in rank, lieutenant commander on the citation and commander on NavSource's command list, is left as the two sources print it. NavSource also shows a letter from Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal awarding the Presidential Unit Citation to Commander Pendleton. The page does not transcribe the letter.

He left England on 30 August 1944. NavSource says the ship reached the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 16 July 1945 for a conversion to a high-speed transport that the end of the war cancelled, and that she was decommissioned at Philadelphia on 15 October 1945. Those dates are after his tour. They are the ship's, not a record of where he went next.

Hall of Valor says he retired as a captain and gives 9 December 1970 as the date of death. It does not give a place of death, a burial, or any duty after England. No such facts were found in the ship pages or the citation, and none are added.