William Price Oliver Clarke (22 June 1893 – 9 November 1949) was a U.S. Navy admiral who led the effort to train landing craft crews for amphibious operations during World War II.

[12] In March 1941, Clarke was named Executive Officer of the USS Washington, which was considered "a prize assignment" according to Naval historian Fletcher Pratt because she was the first new battleship the Navy had launched since 1921.

[14] After Pearl Harbor, the Army and Navy began intense planning for the transport of millions of men into combat and for amphibious operations.

Clarke was transferred to the flagship of Commander Transports, an old American Export Line ship that had been built for the Army in the last war.

The old "dirty and hot" transport ship, stationed at Norfolk, was just back from service in India and had so many cockroaches they crunched under the sailors' feet in the hallways.

Clarke's surprise, he was handled orders to "secure, organize, and train crews for approximately 1,800 landing craft" including LSTs and LCIs, which were still in the design phase.

[16] In creating the landing craft training, Clarke benefited from his experience aboard USS Washington, where as XO he had written the ship's rules and organizational charts even before the battleship was launched.

"They were the butchers, the bakers, and the light bulb makers of American youth," observed Eric Burton, a Navy officer who wrote a semi-official account during the war about the Landing Craft Group.

"[19] "Captain Clarke had less than two months, about one-third of what had been considered the minimum, to train these men to conduct night ship-to-shore landings," wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison in his history of the U.S. Navy in World War II.

Clarke a Gold Star in lieu of a second Legion of Merit for his work in this "assignment of vital importance...the establishment and maintenance of a high state of combat readiness of amphibious ships and craft."

Military historian Irwin Kappes summed up the wartime contributions of landing craft, which rarely get the attention given to other types of naval ships such as carriers, as follows: In the fall of 1944 Clarke was transferred to the Pacific Theater, where he served as Chief of Staff of the Fifth Amphibious Force (formerly known as the Fast Carrier Task Force) under the command of Adm. William Halsey.

He commanded amphibious landings during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, for which he was awarded a Gold Star in lieu of the Legion of Merit for a third time.

The citation read, in part, Adm. Clarke was awarded two Gold Stars in lieu of the Legion of Merit for later service during the War.

The couple bought Lilac Hill, a historic home on 12 acres overlooking Weems Creek in Annapolis, which is now preserved in the Severn River Land Trust.

During the Civil War, Bemiss was in charge of hospitals in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, treated Robert E. Lee in 1863, and was the first to diagnose the heart condition which he died from in 1870.

"In order to do what had to be done, [Clarke] gave of himself so unsparingly that he finally broke down in early 1943 and had to be hospitalized and later retired," recalled Adm. Kent Hewitt, Commander of the North Atlantic Fleet during the War, in his memoirs.

[32] Capt McWethy received the Legion of Merit for his role in the development of SOSUS underwater listening posts as Commander, Oceanographic System Atlantic.

Burton, Lt. Earl, By Sea and By Land: The Story of Our Amphibious Forces, Whittlesey House (McGraw-Hill), London and New York, 1944.