Ships
- USS Erben (DD-631) Captain, 3 March 1945 – 9 December 1945
William Hutton Snyder was a United States Navy lieutenant commander who commanded the destroyer Erben (DD-631) from 3 March 1945 to 9 December 1945, the months in which the ship supported the fast carriers off Okinawa and Japan and ended the war in Tokyo Bay. He remained a regular officer for at least eighteen years afterward. The records examined for this account say little about him as a person, and what follows is mostly the record of his ship.
The sources examined here give no birth date, birthplace, parents, family or schooling for him. The name appears in the Registers of Commissioned Officers from 1947 to 1963 and in the commanding officers' lists compiled by uboat.net and NavSource for the Erben.
No Naval Academy yearbook entry, early Navy Directory entry or biography has been found for a William Hutton Snyder, and so the sources examined here do not show where he went to school, when he entered the service or what his earlier assignments were. They show only that by March 1945 he held the rank of lieutenant commander, which uboat.net gives as dating from 2 March 1945, the day before he took command.
The Erben had been in the Pacific since October 1943, commissioned on 28 May 1943 under Commander J. H. Nevins Jr. According to the Navy's history of the ship, she screened carriers through the Gilberts, Marshalls, Hollandia and Marianas operations and the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and in October 1944 escorted transports to the landings at Leyte. She went back to the United States for an overhaul on the west coast after November 1944. The NavSource list names Commander Morgan Slayton as her commanding officer from 18 December 1943 to 3 March 1945, and Snyder succeeded him.
Under Snyder the ship went back to war. On 15 March 1945, according to the history, she "rendezvoused one day out of Ulithi with the fast carrier task force for air strikes on Kyushu and Okinawa." On 26 and 30 March she rescued four downed aviators between them. Through the landings of 1 April and the two months that followed she screened the carriers off Okinawa. "She fired with success to drive off suicide attacks, rescued survivors of damaged ships, bombarded shore targets, and saved many downed aviators," the history says, and on 3 and 23 May she rescued the same three-man plane crew from the carrier Randolph (CV-15), twice. She spent June at Leyte Gulf for repairs to her sonar and for exercises, and on 1 July sailed with the carriers for the strikes and bombardments on Japan, patrolling in advance of the main body so that returning planes would not lead Japanese aircraft to the carriers. On 9 August, during the bombardment of the steelworks at Kamaishi, she sank two enemy luggers by gunfire. She cruised off Japan with the carriers until 15 September, when she entered Tokyo Bay to replenish. On 1 October she sailed for Okinawa to take on passengers, and arrived at Long Beach on 21 October 1945.
He was relieved on 9 December 1945, two months after that arrival, according to NavSource, by Lieutenant Stanley P. Wyatt Jr. The ship was decommissioned on 31 May 1946. The Navy's history does not name him, and no action report, letter or recollection by him has been found.
The Registers of Commissioned Officers list a William Hutton Snyder on the active list from 1947 to 1963. The 1950 and 1952 Registers list a commander, and the 1956 Register a captain. The sources examined here do not say what he did after leaving the Erben, in which of the later assignments he served, when he retired or when he died. No obituary, marriage, family or burial has been found.