Admiral Sir William Rudolph Slayter KCB, DSO, DSC (13 February 1896 – 30 April 1971) was a British-American senior Royal Navy officer.

[4][5] His mother, Harriet Alice Schloesser, was the daughter of Prussian immigrants.

[6][7] His parents moved to Surrey, England, in the early 1900s, where his father served with the British Red Cross and was an instructor in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

[3] Slayter joined the Royal Navy as a sub-lieutenant on 15 March 1916 during the First World War.

[9] He saw action in the Second World War as Deputy Director of Naval Ordnance from March 1940, Director of Naval Ordnance from January 1941 and as Chief of Staff, Home Fleet from November 1943.