Ships
- USS Intrepid (CV-11) Captain from 19 April 1944 · Relieved on 19 May 1944
William Dodge Sample was born in Buffalo, New York, on 9 March 1898. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in June 1918 and went to sea in the transport Henderson while the First World War was still being fought. He stayed in the Navy after the armistice.
He qualified as a naval aviator on 23 June 1923 and remained at Naval Air Station Pensacola as an instructor. During the rest of the 1920s he served with observation units and in ships that carried them, including the cruisers Raleigh and Richmond and the battleships Arizona and New York. Carrier duty followed in Saratoga. From 1932 to 1935 he commanded Fighter Squadron 5 in Lexington. He then served in the Bureau of Aeronautics, in Ranger, and for a short tour in Yorktown. Promoted to commander in 1939, he returned to Pensacola in 1940 to supervise aviation training.
After the United States entered the Second World War, Sample helped convert the oiler Santee into an escort carrier and took command when she was commissioned on 24 August 1942. That November Santee supported Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa, and he received a letter of commendation for the operation. He later served as an operations officer with the Tenth Fleet at the headquarters of the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet.
On 19 April 1944, as a captain, he assumed command of Intrepid. The carrier was at Hunter's Point on the West Coast, under repair after a Japanese aerial torpedo struck her off Truk on the night of 17 February and jammed her rudder. He relieved Thomas Lamison Sprague, who had brought the damaged ship back across the Pacific. The command lasted a month. Sample was relieved on 19 May 1944 and ordered to the fleet carrier Hornet.
He commanded Hornet through the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944 and through strikes on the Volcano Islands, and he received the Legion of Merit for that service. Detached in August, he was promoted to rear admiral, the youngest rear admiral in the Pacific theater. He flew his flag in the escort carrier Marcus Island as commander of Carrier Division 27.
Carrier Division 27 covered the landings at Palau. In October 1944, at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the division formed part of Task Unit 77.4.2, the escort-carrier group known as Taffy 2, under Rear Admiral Felix B. Stump, during the action off Samar. Early in 1945 the division, still embarked in Marcus Island, supported the invasion of Lingayen Gulf. From February 1945 Sample commanded Carrier Division 22.
On 2 October 1945, a few weeks after Japan's surrender, he took off near Wakayama in a Martin PBM Mariner on a familiarization flight. The aircraft did not return. He was listed as missing that day and declared dead on 3 October 1946. The wreck was found in November 1948, and on 17 May 1949 he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with the others who had been aboard. The Navy later named the destroyer escort Sample for him.