Ships
- USS Stevens (DD-479) Captain, 1 September 1943 – 13 February 1945
William Magnus Rakow was a United States Navy officer from Iowa who graduated from the Naval Academy with the class of 1933 and commanded the destroyer Stevens (DD-479) in the Pacific from September 1943 to February 1945. He received the Legion of Merit for the ship's work at Leyte Gulf, Mangarin Bay and Mindoro from 27 December 1944 to 2 January 1945. He retired as a rear admiral and died in Annapolis, Maryland, on 15 June 1977. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The sources examined here give his home as Keosauqua, Iowa, in the Academy's class book, and name West Point, Iowa, as his birthplace on a commander database. The Hall of Valor, which lists the Legion of Merit, gives his home as Long Beach, California. No birth certificate, census record or family account was found, and the date of his birth was not established. His parents, schooling before the Academy and civilian life are not described in any source examined here.
The 1933 Lucky Bag (the Academy yearbook) gives him three nicknames: "Willie," "Bill" and "Ratchet." The writers opened with a joke at his expense: had Willie not forsaken a promising career in Iowa to follow the sea, "he might now be a Rudy Vallee, a budding Will Rogers, or an 'Alfalfa Bill.'" He had "the most desirable faculty of finding enjoyment in any phase of life," whether "cracking wise," telling a joke in a bull session, "walking back from an evening in Baltimore," or letting his frivolity show during Glee Club practice. "Few escapades are complete without his presence." The sketch is candid about his academic standing: it says that a satisfactory mark was "almost evading his grasp on one or two occasions," and that he did not succumb to "the academics and sub-squad." "If athletic or academic glory have never been his, good fortune has been in the social world. Never is he without an O.A.O." "to fire his soul anew." The sketch ends: "That familiar, 'Hey, pal, she wrote today!' will be characteristic of him always, and the ship which has him in her wardroom will be a happier one." His listed activities are Glee Club, the choir and class football.
The Navy Directories follow him through the prewar fleet. Commissioned an ensign (uboat.net gives 29 May 1934), he served in the carrier Saratoga in 1934 and 1935 and then in the destroyer Long. In 1937 the directory lists him as an ensign under instruction at a naval air station. By 1938 and 1939 he was a lieutenant (junior grade) in the Hannibal, and in the 1940 and 1941 directories he is in the battleship Nevada. The sources examined here do not say where he was on 7 December 1941, or what his duties were in the first year of the war. Uboat.net gives his rank as lieutenant commander temporary from 1 October 1942.
On 8 September 1943, as a lieutenant commander, he took command of the Stevens, a Fletcher-class destroyer commissioned at Charleston on 1 February 1943 under Commander Frank H. Ball. According to the Navy's ship history, she reached Pearl Harbor in August 1943, took part in the Kwajalein operation of January and February 1944, and then moved south to the Solomons and the Southwest Pacific. In the following months she bombarded Nusa and Nusalik in the Kavieng operation, screened the western reinforcement group at Hollandia in April, served at Guam in July, and in September took part in the landings at Morotai, where she served as a radar and antisubmarine picket and for a time as headquarters for the landing craft control officer. Between 28 October and 9 December 1944 she escorted three convoys from New Guinea to Leyte Gulf. His date of rank as temporary commander was 1 January 1944, according to uboat.net.
The ship history records no names of her captain in these actions, and no report or letter by him has been found; what follows is the ship's record during his tenure. From 9 December 1944 the Stevens worked in the Philippines. From 27 December to 1 January she screened a resupply echelon to Mindoro and back, and "splashed three enemy planes during frequent air attacks." Those are the days of his Legion of Merit. The synopsis in the Bureau of Naval Personnel's Information Bulletin of June 1947 says that Commander Rakow was awarded the medal "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States as Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Stevens (DD-479), in Leyte Gulf, Mangarin Bay and Mindoro, Philippine Islands from 27 December 1944 to 2 January 1945." He was relieved on 13 February 1945, according to uboat.net, while the ship lay at Leyte after the Lingayen convoys.
The sources examined here do not describe his assignments after February 1945. The Registers of Commissioned Officers for 1950 and 1955 list him as a commander. The Washington Post notice of his death says that he was the husband of Dorothy Ransdell Rakow of Providence Road, Annapolis, and the father of Mary Rakow of Washington, Mrs. George R. Frank of Woodbridge, Virginia, and Major William M. Rakow Jr., United States Marine Corps, of Virginia Beach. Four grandchildren survived him. He died on 15 June 1977 at Annapolis, and the notice announced a funeral at the Fort Myer chapel on the Friday and burial in Arlington National Cemetery. It asked that those who wished contribute to the Heart Fund.
An Iowan who liked a laugh and a letter from home, he commanded a destroyer through the long advance from the Marshalls to the Philippines, and the one citation the sources record for him comes from a week of air attacks off Mindoro.