Ships
- USS New Jersey (BB-62) Captain from 26 January 1945 · Relieved on 25 July 1945
- USS New Jersey (BB-62) Captain from 28 July 1945 · Relieved on 17 November 1945
Edmund Tyler Wooldridge was born in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, on 5 January 1897. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the Class of 1920. His early sea duty was in the battleship Delaware, the light cruiser Galveston, and the minesweeper Chewink. He afterward served with submarines based at New London, Connecticut, and in the Panama Canal Zone, and he returned to Annapolis as an instructor.
In 1936 and 1937 he served in the destroyer Tattnall. From 1938 he was a staff officer with the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, and he was promoted to commander on 1 July 1939. During the Battle of the Atlantic he worked as operations officer and later as chief of staff of a task force, drawing up plans for the protection of shipping and helping develop the tactics used against U-boats. That service brought him the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. He also received the Legion of Merit for his work, as assistant operations officer and then operations officer on the staff of an Atlantic Support Force, on escort training and convoy doctrine. He was promoted to captain on 18 June 1942. In 1943 and 1944 he served in the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington.
Wooldridge took command of the battleship New Jersey (BB-62) on 26 January 1945. Through the winter and spring the ship operated with the fast carrier force. She took part in the February strikes against the Tokyo area, supported the landings on Iwo Jima, and then fought through the Okinawa campaign, using her main battery ashore and her antiaircraft guns in defense of the fleet. In May 1945 she entered the Puget Sound Navy Yard for overhaul and put to sea again in early July, still under his command.
He was relieved on 25 July 1945 and returned to command of New Jersey on 28 July. In the closing weeks of the war the battleship sailed with the Third Fleet under William Frederick Halsey, Jr. in the last carrier strikes against Japan. After the surrender she remained in Japanese waters. Wooldridge left the ship on 17 November 1945.
He next commanded Cruiser Division 16, based in northeastern Japan, and held that duty until 1947. The division served with the occupation forces along the northern Japanese coast.
From 1947 to 1950 he was Deputy Chief of Naval Operations in Washington. He then returned to the Atlantic Fleet, first in charge of destroyer operations and afterward with the fleet's battleships and cruisers. In 1954 and 1955, as a vice admiral, he commanded the Second Fleet and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Striking Fleet Atlantic. He was commandant of the National War College from 1956 to 1958. On 6 April 1959 he was promoted to admiral, and in that rank he represented the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the National Security Council.
Wooldridge retired as a four-star admiral. He died in Annapolis, Maryland, on 15 December 1968. He and his wife, Marion Johnson, had long been part of the naval community there. Their son, Edmund T. Wooldridge, Jr., followed him into the Naval Academy and the Navy.