Ships
- USS Bellatrix (AK-20) In command, 7 August 1942
William Francis Dietrich was born on 1 August 1893 and was a member of the United States Naval Academy class of 1917. He served through a long Navy career and retired as a rear admiral. He died on 29 June 1959.
At the start of 1942 he was given command of a new cargo ship. The Maritime Commission had ordered the C-2 freighter as Raven and laid the hull down at Tampa Shipbuilding in Florida on 20 November 1940. The Navy acquired the unfinished ship in April 1941, named her Bellatrix, and designated her AK-20. She was launched on 15 August 1941 and commissioned on 17 February 1942 with Commander Dietrich in command.
Bellatrix sailed on 5 March 1942 for a shakedown in the Gulf of Mexico, then headed for the navy yard at Charleston, South Carolina, to finish fitting out. On 10 March, as she closed the harbor, a torpedo fired by a German submarine passed close along her port side. She completed her fitting out and joined the Pacific Fleet.
Dietrich took Bellatrix into the Solomon Islands for the opening assault on Guadalcanal. On 7 August 1942 he was in command as the ship put troops and cargo ashore, and she stayed with the landing through 10 August. The supply work continued after that first assault. From 13 September 1942 into January 1943, still under his command, Bellatrix carried reinforcements and cargo to the forces holding Guadalcanal.
The sharpest of those passages fell between 7 and 18 September 1942, off Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Japanese aircraft attacked Bellatrix five times in three days while she delivered supplies the troops ashore still needed. On one trip Dietrich brought her back to Guadalcanal unescorted, aware that strong enemy surface forces were operating nearby, because the cargo was urgent. He received the Navy Cross for that service. He remained in command until 13 February 1943. On 1 February the Navy reclassified Bellatrix as an attack cargo ship and assigned her the hull number AKA-3.