Ships
- USS Wilson (DD-408) Captain from 26 March 1945
Willis Lincoln Roberts (15 June 1917 – 5 June 2015) was a Naval Reserve officer from Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Evanston, Illinois, a Northwestern graduate of 1938 who went from a Chicago firm into the Navy in 1940. He served as torpedo officer in the old destroyer Leary and in the new destroyer Claxton, and as a lieutenant commander took command of the destroyer Wilson (DD-408) on 26 March 1945, at the age of twenty-seven. Three weeks later, at Kerama Retto, a Japanese aircraft's bomb went through her side and killed five of her crew. He went home to Chicago in 1945, became an investment banker, and lived to the age of 97.
He was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on 15 June 1917, one of three children of Harold G. Roberts, whom his family called "Busty," and Emma D. (Wixon) Roberts. In 1931, when he was thirteen or fourteen, his father moved the family to Evanston, Illinois, and he went through Evanston High School. His obituary says that "perhaps because of his roots in Plymouth, Will was always drawn to the sea." It names a sister, Virginia, whose best friend and neighbor on Holmes Terrace in Plymouth, Lois Brewster, he married late in life. Beyond these facts the sources examined here say nothing of his childhood.
He studied business at Northwestern University, graduating in 1938, and while there belonged to the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and to the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps. At Northwestern he met Mary Jane Ray, called "Skip," of Beverly Hills, Illinois, whom he married. After graduation he worked for two years for the Chicago securities firm of Halsey Stuart & Co., and in 1940 he entered the Navy. He was trained as a torpedo officer at Newport, Rhode Island. The Navy Directory of 1 April 1941 lists him as "Roberts, Willis L, ens, NR, u s s Leary," an ensign of the Naval Reserve in the destroyer.
Leary was a Wickes-class flush-deck destroyer, laid down in 1918, commissioned in 1919 and recommissioned in 1930; in 1941 she was on Atlantic escort duty, and she began escorting convoys to Iceland on 9 September 1941. She was sunk in the North Atlantic by the German submarine U-275 on 24 December 1943, with the loss of 98 men. The sources examined here do not say when Roberts left her or whether he was aboard on any particular convoy; his obituary places his later service in Claxton.
The obituary says that he served in Claxton as executive officer, torpedo officer and damage control officer, and that he took part in battles "from Guadalcanal to Okinawa." It does not date his time in her. Claxton, a Fletcher-class destroyer commissioned on 8 December 1942, went to the Pacific in the spring of 1943 and, as part of Destroyer Squadron 23, fought in the Solomons: Empress Augusta Bay on the night of 1–2 November 1943, and Cape St. George on 25 November 1943, where she and four other destroyers torpedoed and shelled a Japanese destroyer force. In February 1944 an explosion aft damaged her, and she was repaired on the West Coast; she returned to action in August 1944. The ship's history records that on 1 November 1944 off Leyte a suicide plane crashed alongside, killing five of her crew and wounding twenty-three. Which of these he saw, and in what post, the sources examined here do not say.
The rosters of her commanding officers name him as captain of Wilson from 26 March 1945; no account of how he came to be given her has been found. Wilson was a Benham-class destroyer, commissioned in 1939, with a long war behind her that included Savo Island, the Marianas and Lingayen Gulf. Five days before he took her over she had arrived at Ulithi in the screen of the northern attack force for Okinawa. The ship's history records that she reached a point off southwest Okinawa at 0100 on Easter Sunday, 1 April 1945, the day of the landing, and, at 0422, brought down a second plane some 1,500 yards off her starboard beam.
On 16 April 1945 she was at the southern end of Kerama Retto, patrolling while a convoy entered "Wiseman's Cove," when she sighted two planes in loose formation off her starboard quarter. She increased speed to 20 knots and opened fire on the leader. The second plane turned toward her in a shallow glide; she went to 25 knots and put over full left rudder to keep her guns clear, and her five-inch and 40-millimeter fire brought the plane down about 75 yards off the starboard quarter. It bounced off the water, its propeller lodged in a 40-millimeter gun tub, and it spun between the third and fourth five-inch guns and into the sea on the port side. A 250-kilogram bomb it carried passed through the hull just above the waterline and came to rest in an after living compartment. Only the booster charge exploded, but shrapnel ruptured fuel tanks and the main lead to the group three magazines, causing fires and flooding. Five men whose station was in the group three magazine were killed, by drowning and burns, when the sprinkling system ruptured. Three others were blown overboard, two of them seriously hurt; because the ship was in a turn, she circled and recovered them.
The ship's history does not name her commanding officer in this account, and no report, letter or recollection of Roberts about that day has been found. His obituary says only that Wilson "was struck by Kamikaze aircraft, fatally injuring several crewmen, but remained afloat." He was twenty-seven, a Naval Reserve lieutenant commander of three weeks' command. The ship was repaired in the cove, the bomb being removed, and stayed in the Okinawa area until 12 June, screening transports and bombarding targets from Naha to the southern tip of the island. She reached Pearl Harbor on 26 June, was based at Saipan for the rest of the summer, screening convoys, patrolling, and coordinating air-sea rescue until the war ended, operated in the autumn at Iwo Jima, Hagushi and in China waters, and reached San Diego in late December 1945.
The obituary lists his decorations as the Bronze Star, a commendation ribbon, the Philippine Liberation Medal, and the Asiatic-Pacific and Victory Medals. The sources examined here give no citation for the Bronze Star.
According to his obituary he received an honorable discharge in 1945 and "returned home to his wife and family." He joined the Chicago investment firm of Eastman Dillon, and he and Mary Jane raised three sons in an old farmhouse in Palos Park, Illinois. In 1964 he was made a partner in the firm and moved to its New York office on Wall Street; the family settled in Summit, New Jersey, and began summering at Harwich on Cape Cod. He retired in 1975. He served as president of the homeowners' associations in the two communities in which he later had houses, and the family remembered him as "not above a good prank."
Mary Jane Roberts died in 1998, after more than fifty-five years of marriage. He married Lois Brewster Roberts afterward. He died at his home in Naples, Florida, on 5 June 2015, ten days before his ninety-eighth birthday, survived by three sons, Lance, James and Joel, and by grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The services were private. He was interred beside his first wife in the Massachusetts National Cemetery at Bourne.