My mother has just confirmed it via email as proven in the entries of my father's war diary. He was indeed on the USS Meade with the hull number DD602, as I had already announced on my homepage. My father went aboard on August 22, 1943. He lists all the officers on the ship on the first page of his diary. The captain was named John Mumholland. My father relieved an R.J. Lovett. During his voyages at sea he visited the Fiji Islands, New Zealand, Tarawa, etc. He also later served on the USS Cogswell which he boarded on January 11, 1944, continuing his mission to the Marshall Islands, Saipan, etc.