Raymond Stanton Patton

Rear Admiral Raymond Stanton Patton (29 December 1882 – 25 November 1937) was the second Director of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and a career officer in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps, the predecessor of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps. He was the first Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps officer to reach flag rank.

Patton was born in DeGraff, Ohio, on 29 December 1882, the son of Oliver Patton and the former Ida M. Cloninger. After primary and secondary education at public schools in Sidney, Ohio, he studied engineering at Coast Guard Academy. At Western Reserve University, he graduated with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in June 1904.

Within a month of his graduation, Patton accepted a position in 1904 in the Field Corps of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, which at the time was an entirely civilian organization. He began fieldwork in August 1904, serving along the United States East Coast as a civilian junior officer aboard the Coast and Geodetic Survey survey launch USC&GS Hydrographer; during his tour aboard Hydrographer, he participated in survey work to update the United States Coast Pilots publications and accompanied a shore party as it conducted topographic surveys in Virginia. In 1906 he reported aboard the Coast and Geodetic Survey ship USC&GS Thomas R. Gedney for survey work along the southeast coast of the Territory of Alaska.

From the spring of 1907 to 1910, Patton served in the Philippine Islands aboard two survey ships owned by the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands and operated by the Coast and Geodetic Survey, USC&GS Romblon and USC&GS Research. During this tour, he took part in hydrographic surveys of the Tañon Strait, the north coast of Negros, and the southeast coast of Luzon and was a member of shore parties engaged in surveys of Mindanao, Bohol, and Camiguin and nearby islets.

Returning to operations along the U.S. East Coast, Patton took part in projects such as triangulation in Massachusetts and resurveys of the Delaware Bay and Albemarle Sound from 1910 to 1911. In the summer of 1911 he became executive officer of the survey ship USC&GS A. D. Bache, operating along the United States Gulf Coast. Later in 1911, he transferred to the survey ship USC&GS Carlile P. Patterson to serve as her executive officer, initially for operations along the Alaskan coast, but before the year was over also including survey work along the United States West Coast and in the Pacific Ocean approaches to the Panama Canal. In 1912, he became a commanding officer for the first time, taking command of the survey ship USC&GS Explorer; for the next three years, he commanded her during survey operations along the coast of the Territory of Alaska, among the most important of which was survey work along the approach to the Kuskokwim River in Southwest Alaska.

In 1915, Patton took charge of the Coast and Geodetic Survey office in Washington, D.C., responsible for the compilation and publication of the United States Coast Pilots, overseeing both field and office work necessary for the periodic revision and updating of the publications. During this tour, he also authored two Coast Pilots, the 1916 edition of the Coast Pilot for the Alaskan coast from Yakutat Bay to the Arctic Ocean and the 1917 edition of the Coast Pilot for the U.S. West Coast.

The United States entered World War I on the side of the Allies on 6 April 1917, and on 22 May 1917 a new uniformed service of the United States, the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps, was created within the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Patton was commissioned as a lieutenant in the new service, serving as a commissioned hydrographic and geodetic engineer. In accordance with Executive Order 2707, he was among a number of Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps officers transferred to the jurisdiction of the United States Department of the Navy on 24 September 1917 for wartime service with the United States Navy. He was enrolled as a lieutenant in the United States Naval Reserve Force on 19 November 1917.

Patton was assigned to the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Navigation, with which he took up duty at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., as Assistant in the Time Service and Nautical Instrument Division. He became chief of the division on 1 March 1918. The division was responsible for purchasing and distributing to U.S. Navy vessels all navigational instruments except compasses and compass fixtures; for the cleaning, compensation rating, and issue of all U.S. Navy marine chronometers; and with sending out the daily time signal by telegraph and radio. Before World War I broke out, the U.S. Navy had obtained most of its navigational instruments from foreign manufacturers, and their production in the United States had only become a major effort since then, making the division's efforts to procure such instruments in a timely manner a challenging task.