Ships
- USS Louisville (CA-28) Acting captain from 10 April 1946 · Relieved on 17 June 1946
Commander William Penn McCarthy, a graduate of the Naval Academy class of 1923, served in the United States Navy through the Second World War and later retired as a rear admiral. His name is tied to the heavy cruiser Louisville in two roles: executive officer during the Philippines campaign, and acting captain for the last weeks of her commissioned life.
By the autumn of 1944 Louisville, a Northampton-class cruiser commissioned in 1931, was with the Seventh Fleet for the return to the Philippines. McCarthy was her executive officer, and he also evaluated contacts in the combat information center. On the night of 24 October 1944, in the Battle of Surigao Strait, the cruiser fought in the force under Rear Admiral Jesse Barrett Oldendorf, with Captain Samuel Hansford Hurt in command of the ship. That action stopped a Japanese force trying to push into Leyte Gulf. McCarthy's work that night was recognized with the Legion of Merit and the Combat "V".
On 5 January 1945, as Louisville covered the landings in Lingayen Gulf, a Japanese suicide plane struck her and wounded men on the bridge, including the commanding officer, Captain Rex LeGrande Hicks. McCarthy helped run the firefighting and the work of putting damaged equipment back into service. With Hicks unable to carry on, McCarthy directed the ship through further air attacks. A second suicide aircraft hit her the next day, fatally injuring Rear Admiral Theodore E. Chandler. Damaged as she was, the cruiser still shelled the beaches before leaving for repairs at the Mare Island Navy Yard. For his conduct on 5 January he received the Silver Star.
After that yard period Louisville returned to the western Pacific for the close of the Okinawa campaign, took a third suicide hit on 5 June 1945, and was back at Pearl Harbor when the war ended. She then sailed for occupation duty, covering the recovery of Allied prisoners at Darien in Manchuria and the surrender of Japanese ships at Tsingtao before further work along the China coast and a voyage home. Other officers held command through those months.
On 10 April 1946 McCarthy became acting captain of Louisville. He had the cruiser for her passage into retirement. At the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 17 June 1946 he was relieved, and that same day the ship was decommissioned and placed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. She stayed in reserve until September 1959, when she was sold for scrap. The short acting command was the formal close of a war cruise in which McCarthy had already handled the ship in battle, first from the combat information center at Surigao Strait and then on a burning bridge in Lingayen Gulf.