Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Riley Franklin McConnell of Scott, Virginia
On March 28, 1943, at Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Port Newark, New Jersey, a new destroyer escort slid down the ways and into the water. Shipyard workers watched from the deck. A United States naval ensign flew at the bow. Mrs. Grace Otteson McConnell, widow of Captain Riley Franklin McConnell, broke the christening bottle against the vessel that now carried her husband’s name.
The ship was USS McConnell, DE-163. It was not named for a large city, a famous admiral, or a battle. It was named for a man born in Gate City, Virginia, in the mountains of Scott County.
Riley Franklin McConnell’s story stretches from southwest Virginia to Annapolis, from the Atlantic battleship fleet of the First World War to the tense waters of China in the 1930s. He became a United States Navy captain, chief of staff of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, recipient of the Navy Cross, and commanding officer of the Naval Training Station at San Diego. Yet local newspapers still remembered him simply and proudly as a “product of Scott County.”
That phrase matters. It places a national naval career back where it began, in the courthouse town of Gate City, among the ridges, roads, and family networks of far southwest Virginia.
Born at Gate City
Riley Franklin McConnell was born July 22, 1884, at Gate City, Virginia. The Navy’s own ship history gives that birthplace plainly, tying the later USS McConnell directly to Scott County.
His family background belonged to the old local world of Scott County. Genealogical accounts connect him to J. Hop McConnell and Polly Alley McConnell, while Scott County historian Robert M. Addington included him among the notable biographical sketches in History of Scott County, Virginia. Addington’s placement of McConnell in that county history says something about how local memory treated him. He was not simply a Navy man who happened to be born there. He was one of the county’s own, a son of Gate City whose career carried the county’s name far beyond the Clinch and Holston country.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Gate City was a small Appalachian county seat. The railroads, courthouse, churches, schools, farms, and family ties shaped the world into which McConnell was born. For a young man from that setting, the Naval Academy at Annapolis represented a different universe. It was a place of uniforms, examinations, drills, mathematics, seamanship, engineering, and discipline.
McConnell entered that world and stayed in it for the rest of his life.
Annapolis and the Making of a Naval Officer
Naval Academy records from the period list Riley Franklin McConnell among the midshipmen at Annapolis. The 1907 Lucky Bag, the Naval Academy yearbook, identifies him by name and hometown. The Navy’s later official ship history states that he graduated from the United States Naval Academy on June 7, 1909.
That date is worth noting because some compiled sources give slightly different class-year references. For the purposes of his official Navy career, the strongest source is the Navy’s own record attached to the ship that bore his name. It places his graduation in 1909.
The Naval Academy of McConnell’s day was not a symbolic school. It was a demanding route into a rapidly modernizing Navy. The United States had emerged from the Spanish-American War with new overseas possessions and new strategic concerns. Young officers trained at Annapolis were expected to serve in a Navy that ranged across the Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and Asia.
McConnell’s career followed that larger pattern. He did not remain in one narrow specialty. Over more than three decades, he moved through shipboard duty, engineering work, communications, command assignments, staff work, war college study, Far Eastern service, and training command. The Navy’s short biographical entry calls it “a wide variety of assignments,” and that phrase is accurate.
Battleships, Radio, and the First World War
McConnell’s early Navy years came during an era when battleships still symbolized national power. According to later Naval Training Center history, he served aboard USS Vermont after leaving the Academy and later held engineering duty aboard USS Des Moines. He also served in radio-related work at Mare Island, a sign of the changing Navy he had entered.
Radio was transforming naval operations. Ships no longer depended only on flags, lamps, couriers, and prearranged orders. The ability to communicate across distance changed command at sea, and officers who understood that world became increasingly important.
During the First World War, McConnell served as navigator in USS Arkansas. Arkansas operated with the American battleship force associated with the British Grand Fleet, placing McConnell in the great Atlantic naval struggle of the war. Later summaries connect his service to the Grand Fleet clasp of the Victory Medal.
After the war, his work continued across major assignments. Navy records and later career summaries place him in executive officer roles aboard USS Ohio, USS Relief, and USS Chicago. He also commanded USS Iowa near the end of that old battleship’s active life before it was converted into a radio controlled target.
These assignments show the slow climb of a career officer. McConnell was not remembered for a single dramatic battle. His reputation grew from competence, responsibility, and trust.
War College, Hawaii, and the Road to the Asiatic Fleet
In the 1920s, McConnell’s path led through the Naval War College and the Asiatic Fleet. Official Navy history states that, following instruction at the Naval War College, he served on the staff of the Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet, between 1925 and 1927.
The Asiatic Fleet occupied a complicated place in American naval history. It operated in waters where the United States had interests, citizens, missionaries, businesses, treaty rights, and strategic concerns. Its ships moved among the Philippines, China, and other Far Eastern stations. The work required more than seamanship. It demanded judgment, restraint, diplomacy, and a constant reading of events ashore.
McConnell’s later career suggests that superiors trusted him in precisely those areas.
By the early 1930s, he was no longer simply a ship officer moving from billet to billet. In 1933, according to a Naval Training Center career summary, he began a tour connected to the governor of Hawaii. The Gate City Herald reported in November 1934 that Commander Riley F. McConnell had served as naval aide to the governor of Hawaii and was connected with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Hawaiian visit. The same local newspaper treated the story as a matter of Scott County pride.
In 1935 and 1936, McConnell commanded USS Milwaukee. Command of a cruiser was a significant achievement for any naval officer. It marked him as a senior officer trusted with a major warship and crew.
Then came the assignment that would define his historical reputation.
Chief of Staff in a Dangerous Far East
McConnell returned to the Asiatic Fleet and served as chief of staff to the Commander in Chief from October 30, 1936, to July 25, 1939. He was commissioned captain on September 1, 1934, and by the late 1930s he was serving close to Admiral Harry E. Yarnell during one of the most dangerous periods in East Asia before the Second World War.
China and Japan were at war. The fighting touched coastal cities, river ports, foreign settlements, shipping lanes, and civilian communities. American naval officers in the region had to protect American lives and interests while avoiding reckless escalation. The Asiatic Fleet was not large enough to impose peace on Asia, but it had to be visible enough to protect Americans and steady enough not to inflame the crisis.
Official Navy photographs place Captain Riley F. McConnell aboard USS Augusta at Shanghai in the summer of 1938. Augusta served as flagship in those waters, and the photographs identify McConnell as chief of staff to CINCAF, the Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet. In one image he appears in white uniform under the flag, a Scott County native standing on the deck of a cruiser at the center of a tense international crisis.
The Navy Cross citation later described the conditions of his service. It referred to extensive military, naval, and aerial operations along the coastal ports, rivers, and mainland of China during the Sino-Japanese hostilities. It credited the Asiatic Fleet and attached Marine forces with safeguarding the lives and interests of American citizens in the Far East under difficult and hazardous conditions.
The citation also tells us something about McConnell’s personal role. When the Commander in Chief was absent from his station, McConnell carried on administration of the fleet. The citation praised his judgment, tact, diplomacy, leadership, and administrative ability.
Those are not battlefield words in the usual sense. They are the words of command under pressure. McConnell’s Navy Cross was not for charging a gun or rescuing a ship under fire. It was for guiding a fleet staff through a crisis where one mistake could have endangered lives, ships, and American relations in Asia.
Authority on Far Eastern Affairs
By the time McConnell left the Asiatic Fleet, his name carried weight in naval circles. Local and California newspapers described him as an authority on Far Eastern affairs. That reputation had been earned in the years when American officers in China were watching Japan’s expansion, China’s suffering, and the uncertain future of the Pacific.
On August 22, 1939, McConnell assumed command of the Naval Training Station at San Diego, California. The timing was striking. Europe was weeks away from full-scale war. The Pacific was tense. The United States was not yet at war, but the Navy was already preparing for a world that seemed to be moving toward conflict.
San Diego’s training station mattered because it shaped sailors for service. McConnell had spent his career at sea, on staffs, and in Far Eastern command circles. Now he was responsible for training the next generation of naval personnel.
His time there was short. Captain Riley Franklin McConnell died on active duty at San Diego on July 12, 1940, just ten days before his fifty sixth birthday. The Enterprise-Record of Chico, California reported his death that day and identified him as commander of the San Diego Naval Training Station and an authority on Far Eastern affairs.
He was later buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
USS McConnell Goes to War
Less than three years after his death, McConnell’s name went to sea again.
USS McConnell, DE-163, was a Cannon class destroyer escort. The ship was laid down by Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company at Newark, New Jersey, on October 19, 1942. It was launched on March 28, 1943, with Grace Otteson McConnell as sponsor, and commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on May 28, 1943.
Destroyer escorts were not glamorous ships in the way battleships and aircraft carriers were. They were practical, hard working vessels built for convoy protection, anti-submarine duty, screening, patrol, and support. Their importance was enormous. In a global war fought across oceans, armies could not move, carriers could not strike, and island bases could not survive without escorted supply lines.
After training, USS McConnell sailed for the Pacific. It escorted ships to Pearl Harbor, Samoa, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, and the Solomons. It carried out escort and anti-submarine patrol operations in the South Pacific, supported movements connected to Guadalcanal and the Solomons, and later helped protect shipping tied to the recapture of Guam.
In the last year of the war, McConnell escorted logistics ships supporting fast carrier operations. These carriers struck Japanese positions from the Palaus to the Philippines, from Formosa to Mindanao. Later the destroyer escort patrolled around bypassed islands in the Marshalls, supported air-sea rescue work, conducted shore bombardments, rescued Marshallese civilians, and received surrendering Japanese soldiers.
The ship named for a Gate City officer earned three battle stars for World War II service.
USS McConnell was decommissioned in 1946 and remained in the inactive fleet until it was eventually sold for scrapping in 1974. Its active life was brief, but it carried Riley Franklin McConnell’s name across the Pacific during the very war that his Asiatic Fleet years had foreshadowed.
Scott County Remembered Him
The Gate City Herald’s March 25, 1943 coverage of USS McConnell brought the story home. The paper described Captain McConnell as a product of Scott County and connected the new ship to the local man behind the name. For readers in Gate City, the launching of a Navy vessel in New Jersey was not a distant industrial event. It was local history.
That local pride is understandable. Appalachian history is often told through soldiers, miners, preachers, labor organizers, musicians, and frontier families. McConnell’s life adds another kind of Appalachian story. He came from the mountains and entered the professional officer corps of the United States Navy. His career touched battleships, radio stations, the Naval War College, Hawaii, China, Shanghai, San Diego, and the Pacific war.
He was not a folklore figure or a famous politician. He was a career officer whose work was often administrative, technical, diplomatic, and strategic. That makes his story less dramatic on the surface, but perhaps more revealing.
The mountain counties of Appalachia have long sent sons and daughters into national service. Some became infantrymen. Some became nurses, teachers, missionaries, aviators, engineers, and sailors. McConnell’s life shows how far one of those paths could lead.
Why Riley Franklin McConnell Matters
Riley Franklin McConnell matters because his life connects Scott County to the wider history of the United States Navy in the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in Gate City during the age of small courthouse towns and horse roads. He came of age as the Navy was becoming a global force. He served through the First World War, the rise of radio and modern fleet organization, the interwar years, the tense Far East of the 1930s, and the early preparation for the Second World War.
His Navy Cross recognized qualities that are easy to overlook: judgment, tact, diplomacy, administration, leadership, and steadiness under hazardous conditions. Those traits do not always produce famous scenes, but they often decide whether people survive a crisis.
The ship named for him carried that legacy into the Pacific. USS McConnell escorted convoys, guarded supply lines, supported island campaigns, and earned three battle stars. In that sense, the Gate City name on its stern became part of the war at sea.
Today, Riley Franklin McConnell deserves a clearer place among notable Scott Countians. He stands beside musicians, public figures, athletes, and local leaders as proof that Appalachian lives have never been confined by the mountains around them. From Gate City to Shanghai, from San Diego to a destroyer escort in the Pacific, his story is one of service, discipline, and a county’s quiet pride in one of its own.
Sources & Further Reading
Naval History and Heritage Command. “McConnell (DE-163).” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Last modified April 7, 2016. https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/m/mcconnell.html
Naval History and Heritage Command. “NH 81631 Captain Riley F. McConnell, USN.” https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-81000/NH-81631.html
Naval History and Heritage Command. “NH 81632 Captain Riley F. McConnell, USN.” https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-81000/NH-81632.html
Naval History and Heritage Command. “NH 77697 USS Augusta (CA-31).” https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-77000/NH-77697.html
Naval History and Heritage Command. “NH 81679 Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, USN.” https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-81000/NH-81679.html
Naval History and Heritage Command. “USS Augusta (CA-31).” https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/us-navy-ships/alphabetical-listing/a/uss-augusta–ca-31-0.html
Naval History and Heritage Command. “USS Isabel (SP-521, Later PY-10).” https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/us-navy-ships/alphabetical-listing/i/uss-isabel–sp-521–later-py-10-0.html
Military Times. “Riley McConnell.” Hall of Valor. https://valor.militarytimes.com/recipient/recipient-27596/
United States Naval Academy. The Lucky Bag, 1907. Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Academy, 1907. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Lucky_Bag_%28IA_luckybag1907unse%29.pdf
United States Naval Academy. Annual Register of the United States Naval Academy, 1906-1907. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907. https://archive.org/stream/annualregiste19061907unse/annualregiste19061907unse_djvu.txt
United States Navy Department. Navy Directory, Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 1940. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1940. https://archive.org/stream/navydirectoryoff1940unit/navydirectoryoff1940unit_djvu.txt
United States Navy Department. Register of the Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. https://archive.org/details/registerofcommis1905wash
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. “Navy Department.” President’s Secretary’s File. https://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/psf/psfa0261.pdf
California Digital Newspaper Collection. “Enterprise-Record, Volume 72, Number 79, 12 July 1940.” https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=ER19400712.1.1
Virginia Chronicle. “Gate City Herald, 8 November 1934.” https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=GCH19341108.1.1
Virginia Chronicle. “Gate City Herald, 25 March 1943.” https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=GCH19430325.1.1
Calisphere. “Asiatic Fleet. Weekly Intelligence Summaries (H.K.), 1939.” Harry Yarnell Papers. https://calisphere.org/item/bb7db01109eb7f99bc63ce252dff3d01/
Calisphere. “Asiatic Fleet. Weekly Intelligence Summaries, 1938, August.” Harry Yarnell Papers. https://calisphere.org/item/6caa08918dcf348ef62c4fcd9a44e5f0/
Calisphere. “Asiatic Fleet. Weekly Intelligence Summaries, 1939, April.” Harry Yarnell Papers. https://calisphere.org/item/15340a1e354edf4f89d3294974f898ba/
Calisphere. “Harry Yarnell Papers, 1937, November.” https://calisphere.org/item/493891c8911a8c5b00b14c0f4578d368/
Addington, Robert M. History of Scott County, Virginia. Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1932. Reprint, Johnson City, TN: Overmountain Press, 1992. https://books.google.com/books/about/History_of_Scott_County_Virginia.html?id=n2pWQWkA1cUC
Addington, Robert M. History of Scott County, Virginia. Digitized copy. Seeking My Roots. https://www.seekingmyroots.com/members/files/H011614.pdf
Kilgore Family Genealogical Record. “Charles Kilgore.” Seeking My Roots. https://www.seekingmyroots.com/members/files/G003732.pdf
NavSource Naval History. “Cruiser Photo Index CL-5 USS Milwaukee.” https://www.navsource.net/archives/04/005/04005.htm
NavSource Naval History. “Destroyer Escort Photo Index DE-163 USS McConnell.” https://www.navsource.net/archives/06/163.htm
Uboat.net. “USS McConnell (DE 163) of the US Navy.” https://uboat.net/allies/warships/1489.html
HyperWar. “DE-163 USS McConnell.” Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1940-1945. https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/DE/DE-163_McConnell.html
CriticalPast. “U.S. Destroyer Escort USS McConnell (DE-163) Is Launched in Newark, New Jersey.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at3V4flJ_6k
TogetherWeServed. “CAPT Riley Franklin McConnell, Navy Cross, U.S. Navy.” https://navy.togetherweserved.com/usn/servlet/tws.webapp.WebApp?ID=1483570&cmd=ShadowBoxProfile&type=AssignmentExt
Find a Grave. “Capt Riley Franklin McConnell.” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/49252023/riley-franklin-mcconnell
Author Note: Riley Franklin McConnell’s story shows how a Scott County life reached far beyond the mountains without losing its local beginning. This article follows the Navy records, Naval Academy material, newspapers, and local history sources that connect Gate City to Shanghai, San Diego, and the World War II ship that carried his name.