Ships
- USS Hoggatt Bay (CVE-75) Captain, 11 January 1944 – 22 December 1944
William Vincent Saunders was born on 8 September 1898 and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1922. He was a lieutenant commander by 23 June 1938. In the first years of the war he rose quickly: temporary commander on 1 January 1942, commander on 30 June 1942, and temporary captain on 1 April 1943.
He already held the rank of captain when he took Hoggatt Bay at Astoria, Oregon, on the morning of 11 January 1944, the day the escort carrier went into commission. Kaiser had launched her at Vancouver, Washington, on 4 December 1943. She was a Casablanca-class ship, CVE-75, named for a bay on Baranof Island in Alaska. Saunders stayed with her while the yard at Tongue Point finished the fitting out.
After that work she trained off the California coast. Between 10 and 25 March 1944 she carried aircraft and the men assigned to them out to Pearl Harbor and back to the West Coast. Composite Squadron 14 came aboard on 26 March. Flight operations began the next day, and Saunders made the first landing on her flight deck.
On 1 May Hoggatt Bay sailed for Pearl Harbor and Majuro. From 26 May to 19 June she patrolled the southwest Pacific with destroyers and destroyer escorts, hunting submarines. The boats sunk on those patrols were sunk by the escorts. England sank RO-105 on 31 May, and Taylor sank RO-111 on 11 June. After a short stay at Eniwetok, the group covered the Marianas operation from 5 July to 9 August and then returned to Manus. Through the late summer and autumn her aircraft supported the fighting at Peleliu and operated around Ulithi and the Philippines. On the morning of 3 October her radar found I-177, and Samuel S. Miles sank the boat.
Saunders had commanded Hoggatt Bay from her commissioning through that first year at sea. Josephus Asa Briggs relieved him at Manus on 22 December 1944. Later command of the carrier passed to Frederick Norman Kivette, then to Marvin Pabodie Evenson, and then to William Paul Schroeder.