THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, March 25, 1995               TAG: 9503250355
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   48 lines

BOONE, FORMER HEAD OF NAVAL ACADEMY, DIES

Adm. Walter F. Boone, who began a 43-year naval career during World War I and later became superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, died on Sunday at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He was 97 and lived in Washington.

The cause was a heart attack, said a spokeswoman for the Academy, from which Admiral Boone graduated in 1921 and to which he returned in 1954 as the 38th superintendent.

Boone's first wartime assignment was in 1918 aboard the Ohio, operating with the Atlantic Fleet. After earning his wings as a naval aviator, he served in scouting, bomber and fighter squadrons between World War I and World War II. In 1942, he was given his second combat assignment, as the executive officer of the aircraft carrier Enterprise.

He participated in the Battle of Midway, the Guadalcanal-Tulagi landings, the battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz and the November campaign of Guadalcanal. He was awarded the Silver Star for his actions in the Battle of Santa Cruz.

Later, he served in the Atlantic for nearly two years, participating in raids against German ships operating in Norwegian waters. He returned to the Pacific in 1945 as commanding officer of the aircraft carrier Yorktown, which participated in the later stages of the Okinawa campaign and the attacks on the Japanese home islands.

After the war, his assignments included command over operations in the eastern Atlantic and serving as chief of staff to the commander of the Seventh Fleet before being appointed as superintendent of the Academy. Two years later, he was promoted to rear admiral and made commander of U.S. naval forces in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

His final assignment before retiring in 1960 with the four stars of a full admiral was as the U.S. representative to the Military Committee and Standing Group of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

As a civilian, he worked for McDonnell Aircraft Co., which in 1967 became part of McDonnell Douglas Corp., and as an assistant to the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

His wife, Polly, died in 1993. by CNB