Ships
- USS Gregory (DD-802) Captain from 9 October 1945
Wayne Mowrer Newport was a United States Navy officer from Davenport, Iowa, a member of the Naval Academy class of 1941. He served in the destroyer Gregory (DD-802) from her commissioning in the summer of 1944, through the Okinawa campaign, and took command of her on 9 October 1945, as a lieutenant commander. In 1947 he held the command of the destroyer Lofberg (DD-759) for a little over a month. The surviving record of his life is thin, and this account sets down what it supports and no more.
The Naval Academy's yearbook for the class of 1941, the Lucky Bag, gives his home as Davenport, Iowa, and its index lists a street address there. It gives his name in full as Wayne Mowrer Newport. Nothing in the sources consulted names his parents, his birth date or his schooling before Annapolis, apart from what the yearbook itself says.
The yearbook's sketch is the only description of him as a young man. It records that he shot as a "high gun" on the rifle team of Davenport High School's Reserve Officers' Training Corps unit, and that in that unit he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. It is headed with the name "Johnny Wayne," and says that no one knew where the name came from. It describes him as quietly serious, with an ever-ready grin, and says that cornfields, rifles, lacrosse sticks, football gear and girls came to mind at the sound of the name.
At the Academy his main activity was small-bore rifle shooting. The activity list under his sketch shows him on the small-bore rifle team in each of his four years, as captain of the team, and as a winner of the Academy's varsity letter, the "N*" awarded for the sport. The yearbook says that he was elected captain of the Navy rifle team and that he spent most of his time "knocking an amazingly small bullseye out of a target at fifty feet." He also took part in company pistol, battalion football and battalion lacrosse, and was a member of the Quarterdeck Society.
The sketch does not mention his academic standing, his first postings after graduation or his service in the first years of the war. For these the sources consulted are silent.
The record picks him up again in 1944. The Gregory's officer and crew roster, kept by the ship's association, lists "Newport, Wayne M" as a lieutenant commander and a plank owner, a member of the first crew, with service from July 1944 to October 1945. The roster does not state what position he held. Gregory, a destroyer, was commissioned at Seattle on 29 July 1944 under Commander Bruce McCandless, who commanded her until 9 October 1945.
The ship's own history, not his, describes what the crew went through. She took part in the Iwo Jima operation in February 1945 and then in the Okinawa campaign from 1 April 1945. On 8 April 1945 a Japanese suicide aircraft struck her, and two men were wounded. She was repaired at Kerama Retto, escorted the carrier Intrepid, and reached San Diego on 18 May 1945. The sources consulted say nothing about Newport's own part in these events: no citation, no letter and no account by him or by a shipmate has been found.
On 9 October 1945 he relieved McCandless in command of the Gregory. He held the command until 15 June 1946, when Lieutenant Commander Pride Cinclair Brown Jr. took over. The ship was decommissioned on 15 January 1947. The sources do not describe what the ship did during his tenure.
His next recorded command was the Lofberg, a destroyer. The list of her commanding officers shows him in command from 11 June 1947 to 14 July 1947, between Lieutenant Commander John Dale Pye Hodapp Jr. and Commander Joseph Hawes Wesson. The ship had come out of an overhaul at Mare Island on 7 April 1947. The sources do not say why he held the ship for only five weeks.
After July 1947 the trail goes cold. Neither his later assignments, nor his final rank, nor the date of his retirement is established by anything consulted. No obituary text, grave record, family record or memoir bearing on him was found.