Captain Washington Irving Chambers, USN (April 4, 1856 – September 23, 1934) was a 43-year, career United States Navy officer, who near the end of his service played a major role in the early development of U.S.Naval aviation, serving as the first officer to have oversight of the Navy's incipient aviation program through the Bureau of Navigation.

Early in his career as an ensign, Chambers distinguished himself as one of six officers attached to USS Thetis under Captain Winfield Scott Schley, who led the four-ship Greely Relief Expedition in 1884 that located and rescued U.S. Army First Lieutenant Adolphus Greely and the six other survivors of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition five miles off Cape Sabine in Smith Sound, an uninhabited Arctic sea passage between Greenland and Canada's northernmost island, Ellesmere on June 22, 1884.

Over the next twenty-five years, in shore duty that alternated with his sea duty, to include teaching at the Naval War College, the Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, and Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance (1907-09), Chambers contributed to the design of torpedoes and the Navy's first all-big-gun battleships, cementing his reputation as one of the Navy's leading intellects and technology innovators, as well as a savvy navigator of the Navy's labyrinthine bureaucracy, which put him in good stead to advocate for naval air against early skepticism and resistance.

In June 1871, Washington Chambers was appointed a cadet midshipman to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland from New York's 13th congressional district.

From August 27 to December 5, 1943, famed polar explorer and retired Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd and his team embarked on Concord from Balboa, the western terminus of the Panama Canal, for a special mission to conduct a highly secret survey of 33 South Pacific islands to identify potential sites for refueling bases for military use and for post-World War II commercial flights.

A large explosion at sea on October 7, 1943, took the lives of 24 Concord crewmen, including the executive officer, Commander Rogers Elliott.

Caused by ignition of gasoline fumes at the stern of the ship, the explosion threw some men overboard, while others were killed from concussion, burns, fractured skulls, and broken necks.