Ships
- USS Hoggatt Bay (CVE-75) In command, 11 June 1946 – 20 July 1946 · Decommissioned her
William Paul Schroeder left the United States Naval Academy in 1932 and served as an officer in the United States Navy. In the summer of 1946 he was a commander. He later rose to rear admiral. The duty that fixes his name in the wartime fleet is the closing out of the escort carrier Hoggatt Bay.
Hoggatt Bay, a Casablanca-class escort carrier, was commissioned at Astoria, Oregon, on 11 January 1944, with William Vincent Saunders in command. Through the rest of the war she worked in the Pacific, carrying aircraft toward Hawaii, hunting Japanese submarines alongside destroyers in the southwest Pacific, and providing air cover for the Marianas operation. She earned five battle stars. Josephus Asa Briggs relieved Saunders on 20 December 1944 and kept the ship through the last months of fighting.
After the surrender she joined the Magic Carpet voyages that brought servicemen home. Frederick Norman Kivette commanded her from 14 September 1945 until 30 January 1946. That day, at San Francisco, Marvin Pabodie Evenson took her over. She was then released from the transport service and sent to the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. By early summer she lay at Boston, already in the hands of the reserve fleet.
Commander William Paul Schroeder took Hoggatt Bay on 11 June 1946. He was in command and, at the same time, served as her executive officer. His task was to finish her active life. On 20 July 1946 he decommissioned her at Boston, and she passed into the Boston group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet after a little more than a month under his orders.