United States Naval Chronology: World War II

Office of the Chief of Naval Operations

U.S. Government Printing Office, 1955

[Association Copy, given from Rear Admiral John B. Heffernan to Rear Admiral Charles A. Buchanan.] Bound in publisher's blue cloth. Gilt lettering. Hardcover. Good binding and cover. Shelf wear. Bumped corners. Pages unmarked. Related ephemera included, a typed letter signed by Heffernan to Buchanan. 

In World War II Rear Adm. John B. Heffernan commanded the commanded the screen of destroyers protecting the Allied invaders of North Africa at Casablanca in 1942. Later in the war, Adm. Heffernan was sent to the Pacific, where he commanded a division of five transports in the assault on Guam. He then was chief of staff or a service squadron operating in the forward area. In the last year of the war, he commanded the battleship USS Tennessee, which had been damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor but was put back in action. The Tennessee participated in the battles of the Leyte Gulf, Surigao Strait, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. His decorations in World War II included two Legions of Merit and three Bronze Stars. <br> Rear Admiral Charles Allen Buchanan commanded a destroyer division and squadron during the Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns of World War II. He was operations officer and assistant chief of staff for an amphibious task force that landed in Sicily and Salerno, Southern Italy, and in the Marshall Islands and Guam during WWII. After the war, he became an aide to James Forrestal, the Navy secretary who was the first secretary of defense.