This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Kent Weekly (SS/DSV) (DBF), EMCS
to remember
Anderson, William Robert, CAPT USN(Ret).
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Contact Info
Home Town Bakerville, TN
Last Address Alexandria, VA
Date of Passing Feb 25, 2007
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Wall/Plot Coordinates 66 62
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
“He loved Tennessee, and he loved the Navy,” said Pat Anderson, who married Captain Anderson in 1980 and lives in Virginia.“His real strength was in giving other people the credit,” she said. “He treated everyone with great respect. … He was just totally unpretentious. He truly was shy. He hated cocktail parties and dreaded reunions. He was not a show guy.”
Born in Bakerville, Tennessee, on June 17, 1921, Captain Anderson graduated from ColumbiaMilitaryAcademy in Columbia, Tennessee, and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1942. He quickly advanced, becoming a Captain at 39.
He participated in 11 submarine combat patrol missions missions and was honored with the Bronze Star as well as other awards.
In 1964, Captain Anderson was elected to the U.S. Congress and represented Tennessee’s 6th District as a Democrat for four terms. At that time, the 6th District included 16 counties, including Trousdale, Sumner, Robertson, Cheatham, Montgomery, Dickson, Williamson, Maury and Rutherford.
“The people in this district are people with confidence in Tennessee and the nation to move forward to meet the challenges of this complicated era,” Captain Anderson was quoted as saying in November 1964 after winning the congressional seat. He was defeated in 1972 after he spoke out against the Vietnam war and publicly challenged then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover about the treatment of anti-war activists and brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan. Captain Anderson also served as consultant to Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson on the National Service Corps.
After his retirement from the Navy, Captain Anderson and his wife, Pat, founded Public Office Corporation, a data management firm.
Other Comments:
Submarine combat war patrols:
USS Tarpon (SS-175) - 4th
USS Narwhal (SS-167) - 5th through 12th
USS Trutta (SS-421) - 1st through 3rd
Training Exercise - StrikeBack '57
From Month/Year
September / 1957
To Month/Year
October / 1957
Description Exercise Strikeback was a major naval exercise of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that took place over a ten-day period in September 1957.
As part of a series of exercises to simulate an all-out Soviet attack on NATO, Exercise Strikeback was tasked with two objectives. Its initial objective was the deployment of NATO's naval forces (designated the "Blue Fleet") against other NATO forces attempting to simulate an "enemy" navy that featured a large number of submarines (designated the "Orange Fleet"). Its other objective was to have the Blue Fleet execute carrier-based air strikes against "enemy" formations and emplacements along NATO's northern flank in Norway.
Exercise Strikeback involved over 200 warships, 650 aircraft, and 75,000 personnel from the United States Navy, the Royal Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy, the French Navy, the Royal Netherlands Navy, and the Royal Norwegian Navy. As the largest peacetime naval operation up to that time, military analyst Hanson W. Baldwin of the New York Times said Exercise Strikeback gathered "the strongest striking fleet assembled since World War II."
Operation Strikeback and the other concurrent NATO exercises held during the fall of 1957 would be the most ambitious military undertaking for the alliance to date, involving more than 250,000 men, 300 ships, and 1,500 aircraft operating from Norway to Turkey.
