For his skillful and courageous leadership of that unit of the battleship's landing force and his exhibition of "eminent and conspicuous" conduct, he received the Medal of Honor.

Tennessee and USS North Carolina (ACR-12) were ordered to European waters to evacuate Americans trapped on the continent by the outbreak of World War I.

After commanding the destroyer USS King (DD-242) from January 1925 to December 1926, Wilkinson headed the Records Section of the Bureau of Navigation (BuNav) Officer Personnel Division.

According to his testimony and that of others, ONI was responsible for collecting and evaluating intelligence, but R. Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner, Director of War Plans, had sought and received the authority in 1940 to control information sent to the fleet on "enemy intentions" and "the strategic picture.

Wilkinson, in contrast, admitted that he had believed it was more likely that Japan would strike first somewhere in the southwest Pacific and avoid an immediate direct confrontation with the US – an opinion which the committee report found to have been widely shared by senior US officers before the attack.

In those positions, he is credited by naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison with developing the US "leapfrogging" strategy designed to seize control of the Southwest Pacific islands occupied by Japan.

Rather than attack Japanese bases and fortifications frontally, the strategy was to "hit them where they ain't," by occupying positions behind their forward outposts and cutting their supply lines.

The strategy was so successful that Japanese war czar Tojo before his death told General MacArthur that it was one of the three principal factors that defeated Japan.

[6] Pursuing this strategy, Wilkinson earned the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) for commanding the amphibious forces in the assaults on New Georgia, Vella Lavella, and the Treasury Islands; and established a key position on the west coast of Bougainville.

He was promoted to vice admiral in 1944, and won a gold star in lieu of a second DSM for his leadership in the assaults that took Peleliu and Angaur in the Palaus, and Ulithi in the Carolines.

He was serving in that capacity when he lost his life on February 21, 1946, in a ferry accident at Hampton Roads, in which he was able to save his wife Catherine from drowning but was unable to escape himself.