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Shaun Thomas (Underdog), OSC
to remember
Chandler, Charles Richardson, CAPT.
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Contact Info
Home Town Washington D.C.
Last Address Fairfax, VA
Date of Passing Jun 14, 2005
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Wall/Plot Coordinates 3 2558-LH
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Charles Richardson Chandler, 87, a retired Navy Captain, died of kidney failure, congestive heart disease and prostate cancer June 14, 2005, at The Fairfax, a military retirement home at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Captain Chandler was a native Washingtonian and graduated from Annapolis High School. He was appointed to the Naval Academy and graduated in 1939. He served on USS California before going to submarine school. On Dec. 7, 1941, he was the assistant signal officer aboard USS Pompano, which arrived at Pearl Harbor shortly after the disastrous strike on the Navy's fleet.
His father was a commanding officer of USS Northampton, which was also just off Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack, while Capt. Chandler's mother awaited her husband and son on the island.
During World War II, Captain Chandler also served aboard USS Indiana, USS Drayton and USS Thatcher, surviving kamikaze attacks on two of those ships. He earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star.
After the war, he served on the staff of the command for destroyers based in the Pacific. He spent 1950 to 1952 as an instructor at the Naval Academy in seamanship and navigation and wrote "The Watch Officer's Guide," a textbook used for years.
He took command of USS McDermut, assigned to picket duty off Korea, where his actions won him the Bronze Star for destroying enemy mines and providing gunfire support for minesweepers. When enemy shore batteries fired on the minesweepers, he placed his ship between them and the beach, and fire from his ship silenced three batteries.
He later served at the Fleet Training Group in San Diego, as commanding officer of USS Vega, commanding officer of the Fleet Training Group in Pearl Harbor and commanding officer of the U.S. Naval Station in Yokosuka, Japan. His last sea duty was as commander of the service squadron at Newport, R.I. He retired in 1969 after serving on the Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey in Washington.
In retirement, he was active in reunion organizations for the Drayton and Thatcher crews. He also patented a device to purify water.
His wife, Ann Yates Chandler, died in 1986.
Other Comments:
To view the Silver Star and Bronze Star citations, click on the corresponding ribbon in the Ribbon Bar.
World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Okinawa Gunto Operation
From Month/Year
March / 1945
To Month/Year
June / 1945
Description The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg. was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan, and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi (550 km) away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland (coded Operation Downfall). Four divisions of the U.S. 10th Army (the 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th) and two Marine Divisions (the 1st and 6th) fought on the island. Their invasion was supported by naval, amphibious, and tactical air forces.
The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of kamikaze attacks from the Japanese defenders, and to the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle resulted in the highest number of casualties in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Based on Okinawan government sources, mainland Japan lost 77,166 soldiers, who were either killed or committed suicide, and the Allies suffered 14,009 deaths (with an estimated total of more than 65,000 casualties of all kinds). Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria caused Japan to surrender less than two months after the end of the fighting on Okinawa.
