Captain Robert Boling Kelly (died 1989) was the executive officer of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 (RON 3) in World War 2, immortalized in the movie They Were Expendable. Returned to the United States in May 1942. After three months in the hospital and a month at Melville he was ordered to commission Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Nine (RON 9). He spent the next eighteen months in Ceubal and front line action in the northern Solomon Islands before returning to the US in May 1944. He was then assigned as the officer in charge of a PT shakedown in Miami. After six months there he was made the C.O. of a 2100 ton destroyer - USS Irwin - that was used in the Okinawa campaign and the occupation of Japan. USS Irwin returned to the US in November 1945 and was assigned to an inactive fleet. After three months of overhaul in Bremerton, Washington Kelly and the USS Irwin went to San Diego. After deactivating the USS Irwin, he was given an instructor position at the United States Naval Academy (marine engineering). September 46 he was on board the North Carolina as an instructor for the mid-shipman summer cruise.
PTC RON 1 Squadron Executive Officer/PTC 4 Skipper February 20-July 17, 1941
RON 3 Squadron Executive Officer/PT 34 Skipper August 12, 1941-April 15, 1942
RON 9 Squadron Commander/PT 159 Skipper(only during pre deployment work ups ) November 10, 1942-January 12, 1944
MTB BASE GREEN ISLAND CO Jan-May(?) 1944
USS IRWIN (DD-794) Commanding Officer Jun 1945 - May 31, 1946
USS Atka (AGB-3) Commanding Officer 10 January 1950 - 1956 (Very strange history of this ship, Originally Commissioned as USCGC Southwind WAGB-280 15 July 1944 - 25 March 1945 .then Decommissioned Lend Lease 25 March 1945 - 10 January 1950 to Soviet Union as "Kaptian Belusov", then returned to USN commissioned as "USS Atka" on 1 October 1950, then transferred back to USCG as USCGC Southwind WAGB-280 again 1967-1974) .
USS Shenandoah (AD-26) Commanding Officer 3 September 1958 - 11 September 1959 He retired from the Navy as a Captain in 1961 and joined Martin Marietta's aerospace division. He later served as a counselor of vocational rehabilitation for the State of Maryland.
CAPT. Robert Bolling Kelly USN (Ret.) died of pneumonia Jan. 23 1989, at Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, Maryland.