Ships
- USS Minneapolis (CA-36) Captain from 17 December 1938 · Relieved on 26 September 1940
David Irvin Hedrick was born on 31 December 1886 and entered the United States Navy with the Naval Academy class of 1909. He was promoted to captain on 1 April 1937. His seagoing record runs from destroyer commands before and after the First World War to a heavy cruiser in the last years of peace.
From 13 November 1913 to 28 January 1914 he commanded the destroyer Walke, following Charles R. Train and handing the ship on to Walter A. Edwards. He returned to the destroyer force in the 1920s. On 1 April 1923 he took command of Burns after William H. Lee, and he was still in that command at the start of 1925.
Hedrick assumed command of the heavy cruiser Minneapolis (CA-36) on 17 December 1938. The New Orleans-class ship had been commissioned on 19 May 1934 with Gordon W. Haines as her first commanding officer, and she was serving in Cruiser Division 7 of the Scouting Force when Hedrick came aboard. Under him she worked the West Coast, made a cruise into the Caribbean early in 1939, and then went back to Pacific duty. Through the rest of his tour she remained with the Scouting Force as the fleet's attention turned toward Hawaii.
He was relieved on 26 September 1940, after a little more than twenty-one months in command. Frank Jacob Lowry followed him in Minneapolis and still had the cruiser when the Pacific war opened. Hedrick's months in the ship were spent on fleet exercises, gunnery, and long cruises. In the war that followed, Minneapolis fought at the Coral Sea, at Midway, and in the Solomons, campaigns that came after he had left the ship.