Rear Admiral Desmond William Piers, CM DSC CD (June 12, 1913 – November 1, 2005) was a rear-admiral in the Royal Canadian Navy.

Rear Admiral Piers is best known for his courageous actions in 1944 when, as the 30-year-old Commanding Officer of HMCS Algonquin, he directly participated in the invasion in France where he guided his ship and her crew through the conflagration of D-Day.

Piers was captain of the Canadian destroyer HMCS Restigouche from June 1941 (previously her First Lieutenant), during the battle to maintain the critical convoy routes to Britain.

At the time, Canadian escort ships were regarded as inferior to their British equivalents and they were generally assigned to the slower, more vulnerable convoys.

On this occasion, Restigouche was the only ship of Piers' group with working radar and direction finding equipment, both necessary to locate u-boats.

[2] This level of losses was unsustainable and Admiral Sir Percy Noble, the then Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches, insisted that Canadian escorts immediately be withdrawn for training or reassigned to less vulnerable routes.

This was recognised by the award of the Distinguished Service Cross, some months later[note 1][3] On September 26, 1943, Piers played a key role in an attempt by the Royal Canadian Navy and Canadian Army to trap a German submarine sent to pick up escaping prisoners of war at Pointe de Maisonnette, New Brunswick.