Paul Jacobs (U.S. Navy officer)
officer of the United States Navy
Captain Paul Hamilton "Jake" Jacobs (October 7, 1936 – December 8, 2020) was an officer in the United States Navy who served five combat tours in Vietnam, including as commander of USS Kirk (DE-1087) during Operation Frequent Wind. He is credited with saving the lives of 30,000+ South Vietnamese citizens following the Fall of Saigon.
Early life
Jacobs was born in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of marine engineer George Jacobs and Carolyn Stanley, a nurse. His family could trace their lineage back to pre-revolutionary colonial Massachusetts. He later moved in with his grandparents in Steuben, Maine, then to Castine when his father joined the faculty at Maine Maritime Academy. Jacobs graduated from Milbridge High School in 1955. He then attended Maine Maritime, graduating in 1958. He frequently credited both his father and professor Joe Pittison as examples of the style of leadership he would later apply in life.
A draft notice prompted Jacobs to join the United States Navy Reserve, where he knew he could gain a commission as an ensign rather than serve as a private in the Army. One month later, he found himself in Kinmen aboard USS Onslow as an engineering officer in the middle of the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
“Paul Jacobs (U.S. Navy officer)” enters the record as officer of the United States Navy. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Paul, Jacobs and Navy can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Jacobs (U.S. Navy officer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.