Ships
- USS Fullam (DD-474) Captain, 1 July 1943 – 5 December 1944
William Daniel Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 19 October 1910. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1932 and received a regular commission in the Navy. He advanced to lieutenant on 1 July 1939, to temporary lieutenant commander on 15 June 1942, and to temporary commander on 18 November 1942.
He became captain of the Fletcher-class destroyer Fullam (DD-474) on 1 July 1943. The ship had been built at the Boston Navy Yard and placed in commission on 2 March 1943 under Henry Chesley Daniel, who had taken her through a brief spell of East Coast escort duty and into San Diego at the end of June. Kelly relieved Daniel as Fullam made ready for the Pacific.
The opening weeks of his command were spent in overhaul at Mare Island. Fullam left the yard on 25 July 1943, trained in Hawaiian waters, and reached Efate in the New Hebrides on 28 August. From that base she took up escort and patrol work in the Solomon Islands. On 1 November she covered the landing at Cape Torokina on Bougainville. Through the weeks that followed she guarded the convoys that carried men and supplies into Empress Augusta Bay and shelled Japanese positions along that shore, including a bombardment on 25 January 1944.
At the end of January Fullam screened transports at Vella Lavella while a mixed party of New Zealanders and American sailors went ashore on the Green Islands on 30 January and came off again that night. When New Zealand troops landed in strength on 15 February, Kelly’s destroyer was part of the covering force. She stayed on patrol, escort, and gunfire duty in the Solomons and joined the landing on Emirau on 20 March 1944. On 9 April she was still underway in the South Pacific.
After replenishment at Port Purvis and Espiritu Santo, Fullam joined the Fifth Fleet for the assault on the Marianas. She arrived off Tinian on 12 June 1944 and fired on Tinian and Saipan from the next morning until the landings on 15 June. Ordered west to search for a Japanese force moving to challenge the invasion, she came back to the carriers on 19 June as the Battle of the Philippine Sea opened. On 20 July she was engaged against Japanese-held Guam. For his handling of Fullam in the Palau Islands from 30 March to 1 April 1944, in the Philippine Sea fighting that June, and off Guam on 20 July, the Pacific high command awarded him the Silver Star, citing the skill and courage with which he fought the ship.
Kelly kept Fullam until 5 December 1944, when Gideon Millard Boyd relieved him. In the last summer of the war he took command of another new destroyer, McKean (DD-784), serving as her captain from 9 June 1945 until 11 December 1946. He retired from the Navy as a captain. William Daniel Kelly died on 10 September 1983, at the age of seventy-two.