Ships
- USS Cabot (CVL-28) Captain from 6 February 1945 · Relieved on 18 December 1945
Walton Wiley Smith was a captain in the United States Navy. From 6 February 1945 until 18 December 1945 he commanded the light aircraft carrier Cabot (CVL-28), through the last carrier offensives of the Pacific War and the first months after Japan’s surrender.
Cabot was an Independence-class ship, a fast carrier built on a cruiser hull so she could stay with the large carriers of the Fast Carrier Task Force. By the time Smith took her she had already fought through the Central Pacific and the Philippines. Earlier commanding officers included Malcolm Francis Schoeffel and Stanley John Michael. In November 1944 a kamikaze struck her flight deck. She was repaired and returned to the operating force, and Smith assumed command on 6 February 1945.
In the middle of February the fast carriers steamed against the Japanese home islands. Cabot took part in the strikes on the Tokyo area on 16 and 17 February, the first large carrier attacks on that region since 1942, and then covered the landings on Iwo Jima. Her aircraft worked over airfields, shipping, and positions ashore while the task force refueled at sea and kept fighters overhead. Smith’s first weeks in command were a continuous round of dawn launches, deck crashes, and night recoveries.
Late in March the same force opened the campaign for Okinawa. From the waters off the Ryukyus, Cabot sent bombers and fighters against airfields on Kyushu and targets around the island, and her combat air patrols met the kamikaze raids that hammered the fleet through the spring. On 7 April 1945 aircraft of the fast carrier force sank the battleship Yamato on her sortie toward Okinawa. Cabot stayed with that force through the long battle, until organized fighting on the island ended in June.
In July and early August 1945 she went north again with the Third Fleet carriers. Her planes struck shipping and airfields on Hokkaido and Honshu in the last series of raids before Japan agreed in mid-August to surrender. Patrols and occupation flying then took the place of the daily strike cycle, and the ship remained in the western Pacific as the fleet began to send men home. Smith was relieved on 18 December 1945. Over the whole war Cabot earned a Presidential Unit Citation and nine battle stars. His months aboard were the closing combat chapter of that record, from Tokyo and Iwo Jima through Okinawa and the final raids on Japan.