Ships
- USS Maury (DD-401) Captain from 5 August 1938
Edward M. Thompson was born on 15 February 1899 and graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1921. By the late 1930s he was a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy.
On 5 August 1938 he took command of the new destroyer Maury (DD-401) at her commissioning in San Francisco. Bethlehem Steel had laid the ship down at its Union Plant on 24 March 1936 and launched her on 14 February 1938. Virginia Lee Maury Werth, a granddaughter of the hydrographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, sponsored the ship that carried his name. Maury was a Gridley-class destroyer of about 1,500 tons, with four 5-inch guns, sixteen torpedo tubes, and a designed speed of 36.5 knots.
Thompson was her first commanding officer. After the commissioning he took her through trials and shakedown. On light-load runs she was clocked at a reported 42.8 knots, well above her design figure and among the fastest speeds then credited to an American destroyer. The Navy assigned her to the Pacific Fleet, and he remained in command through the fleet's peacetime work.
He left Maury on 29 June 1940. On 1 July 1940 he was promoted to commander. On 20 June 1942, with the country at war, he received the temporary rank of captain.
His later sea command was the battleship New Jersey. He was her commanding officer from 15 November 1945 to 5 August 1946, in the first year after the fighting ended. His recorded commands thus ran from a new Pacific destroyer in the last years of peace to an Iowa-class battleship after the victory.