Ships
- USS South Dakota (BB-57) Captain from 17 August 1945 · Relieved on 1 December 1945
Emmet Peter Forrestel, of Buffalo, New York, was a graduate of the Naval Academy class of 1920 who rose to vice admiral. His command of the battleship South Dakota (BB-57) came only after that ship had finished her fighting in the Second World War.
At Annapolis he stood among the academic leaders of the class and finished as regimental sub-commander. The class of 1920 went out to the fleet on an accelerated schedule. In 1926 he completed a master's degree at Columbia University. Sea duty and shore duty then alternated. From 1935 to 1938 he was naval attaché at the American embassy in Rome, and on 1 July 1939 he was promoted to commander.
From 1941 to 1943 he served as aide to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. On 18 June 1942 he was made a temporary captain. Those years placed him in Washington through the opening of the Pacific war, including the night battles off Guadalcanal.
South Dakota made her battle reputation under other captains. On the night of 14-15 November 1942 she fought under Thomas L. Gatch in the second night action off Guadalcanal. She took heavy shellfire, lost electrical power, and fell out of the gun action. The battleship Washington sank the Japanese battleship Kirishima. South Dakota did not. Forrestel was not in command that night.
He took command of South Dakota on 17 August 1945, after the war had ended, and he was relieved on 1 December 1945. Japan had accepted Allied terms on 15 August. His captaincy covered the first months of peace. The formal surrender on board Missouri in Tokyo Bay, on 2 September 1945, fell inside the span of his command.
During the war he also served on the staff of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance with the Fifth Fleet, close enough to that command to write about it later. In 1966 he published Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN: A Study in Command. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1945. From 1945 to 1946 he commanded the naval occupation force in southwestern Japan, and in 1946 he became commandant of the naval base and station at Norfolk, Virginia.
His last post was command of the Ninth Naval District at Great Lakes, Illinois, from March to October 1959. He retired as a vice admiral. Among his decorations was the Legion of Merit. He died on 28 December 1979 in Lake Bluff, Illinois, and was buried in the Naval Academy Cemetery at Annapolis.