Ships
- USS Caperton (DD-650) Captain from 12 July 1945
Will Park Starnes (born 13 January 1916) was a United States Navy officer from Mathiston, Mississippi, a graduate of the Naval Academy in the class of 1939. As an ensign he served in the destroyer Worden, a ship at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and lost in the Aleutians in January 1943. The Navy Register for 1944 lists him as a lieutenant commander. On 12 July 1945, while the fast carrier task force was making its last air strikes on the Japanese home islands, he took command of the destroyer Caperton. On 1 October 1945 he signed the ship's history that was sent to the Secretary of the Navy. She took part in the occupation of Japan, and he commanded her until July 1946. Command lists give him the destroyer Wallace L. Lind from that month until 1948.
He was born on 13 January 1916, according to a hobbyist compilation of Allied officers, and the Naval Academy's yearbook gives his home as Mathiston in Mississippi. The sources examined here do not name his parents, say what they did, or list any brothers or sisters. They say nothing of his schooling before the Academy.
The 1938 Lucky Bag lists "W. P. Starnes, Mississippi" in its roster of the class that would graduate the next year, and the Navy Register for 1936 is the first to list him among the midshipmen. He entered the Academy in 1935, at nineteen.
The 1939 Lucky Bag, the midshipmen's yearbook, has a full page for him. It presents a young man from far inland. "BILL comes from that part of Mississippi where salt water's only use is as a gargle," it begins. "Consequently, his views on the Navy are unbiased by any previous connections. Just get him started on them sometime — but have handy a way to stop him!" His classmates did not think academics a trouble to him: "if it's practical, he'll figure it out; if it's just dope, he probably knows it." He was "a swimmer of some note," and "a rabid sports enthusiast; never missed a sports page since he was old enough to read." And "if you can get him started, he is likely to recite poetry for hours." The sketch closes with his philosophy, borrowed from Mark Twain: "if you can sit, why stand; if you can lie down, why sit?" His activity line lists the Musical Clubs in his fourth- and third-class years, and a further entry reading "M.P.O."
He graduated in June 1939, at twenty-three, and was commissioned an ensign. The Navy Directories of 1940 and 1941 list him as an ensign in the destroyer Worden, and the Navy Registers of 1939–1941 carry him as an ensign.
Worden was one of the Farragut-class destroyers of the Pacific Fleet, and the ship's official history says that after the spring of 1940 the whole fleet was based in Hawaii. On the morning of 7 December 1941 she lay in a nest of destroyers alongside the tender Dobbin at Berth X-2 in Pearl Harbor, receiving upkeep. Her commanding officer's report of 9 January 1942 says she was not hit, brought down one low-flying dive bomber by machine-gun fire, and got under way at 1040, within two hours of the first attack. The directories do not give dates of detachment, and the sources examined here do not say whether Starnes was aboard that morning, or how long he stayed in Worden. He was twenty-five that December. The ship screened the carriers Enterprise and Hornet at Midway in June 1942 and, on 12 January 1943, while she was guarding a transport at Amchitka, she was driven onto a rock and wrecked.
The Navy Registers show his promotions: a lieutenant by 1943, a lieutenant commander by 1944, with the service number 82496. A hobbyist compilation gives his temporary rank as lieutenant commander from 15 March 1944. What he did between his Worden tour and the summer of 1945 is not in any source examined here. No decoration was found for him in the sources examined here.
The destroyer Caperton (DD-650), a Fletcher-class ship, had been commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 30 July 1943. The history that went over his signature lists sixteen months of war operations in Task Groups 58 and 38, among them the Marshalls, Truk, the Marianas, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Palau, Leyte Gulf, and the carrier strikes on Luzon, Formosa and the South China Sea. The ship's own history has an overhaul at San Pedro, California, from 15 February to 15 April 1945 and then radar picket duty off Okinawa from 1 to 26 June. The Navy's official history says that on 29 June she rejoined the fast carrier force "for the final air strikes on the Japanese home islands, which continued until the close of the war."
He took her over on 12 July 1945, at twenty-nine, from Commander George K. Carmichael, who had commanded her since August 1944. At that moment she was a unit of the carrier task groups that were striking Japan. The history that Starnes signed says that from 1 July until the cessation of hostilities she took part in attacks against Tokyo and the Japanese home islands with the Second Carrier Task Force of the Third Fleet, as a member of Task Groups 38.1 and 38.4, and on 27 August took part in the occupation and demilitarization of Japan as a unit of the heavy covering and support force of Task Forces 35 and 53. As transcribed, it is a list of dates and operations, with no individual named in it, and it was sent to the Secretary of the Navy on 1 October 1945 over his signature as commanding officer.
The sources examined here contain no deck log, action report, letter or recollection that describes his conduct of the ship in those weeks, and he is not named in the Navy's official history of her. The official history says only that after several months of occupation duty at Tokyo, Caperton returned to the east coast of the United States.
The hobbyist command lists end his command of Caperton on 7 July 1946 and give him the destroyer Wallace L. Lind from July 1946 to 1948. The Navy's history of that ship says that after returning to the East Coast in February 1946 she changed home port to New Orleans on 12 July 1946 and began Naval Reserve training cruises in the Caribbean, a type of duty that, the history says, characterized her activity for the next several years.
Nothing further was found: no marriage, wife, children, later assignments, rank at retirement, date or place of death, obituary or burial.
What remains of him is a yearbook page that describes a boy from inland Mississippi who would recite poetry at length, a string of ranks and ship names in the Navy's registers, and a one-page list of operations that he sent to Washington in the autumn of 1945, in which a ship's war is told without any mention of her captains.