Ships
- USS North Carolina (BB-55) Captain, 27 May 1943 – 6 October 1944
Frank P. Thomas was born on 21 October 1891. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1914 and began his career in submarines, a branch he continued to study after he left the boats. As a commander he lectured at the Naval War College on 30 September 1937 on submarine warfare, and in 1938 he spoke there on the naval operations of the Spanish-American War. He had held the rank of commander since 30 June 1935. On 1 January 1942 he was promoted to captain.
He and his wife, Marguerite Muller, had sons Francis and Phillip. Phillip later served in the Marine Corps. Navy orders moved the household with him. The family was in Norfolk in 1930 and in Honolulu in 1935, and during the war years they kept a home in Annapolis.
On 27 May 1943 Thomas took command of the battleship North Carolina, relieving Wilder D. Baker. He was the ship's fifth captain. North Carolina had commissioned at New York on 9 April 1941 under Olaf M. Hustvedt, the first of the Navy's new fast battleships to enter service. Sailors called her Showboat. She was already a veteran of the Guadalcanal campaign when Thomas came aboard.
His command carried her out of the South Pacific and into the central Pacific offensive. In September 1943 she was at Pearl Harbor preparing for the Gilbert Islands. In November she supported the landings at Tarawa and Makin. On 8 December her 16-inch guns bombarded Nauru, hitting the airfield, the shore defenses, and the island's radio station. Later that month she screened the carrier Bunker Hill during strikes on Kavieng, New Ireland.
In January 1944 North Carolina joined Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher's fast carrier force at Funafuti, in the Ellice Islands. During the capture of the Marshalls she closed Roi-Namur and bombarded the atoll with other fast battleships, then stayed with the carriers through the raids that followed. She screened those carriers in the Marianas. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June 1944 her anti-aircraft guns engaged Japanese aircraft while American carrier squadrons destroyed most of what remained of Japan's carrier air strength. She was still with the fast carriers for the Palau operation in September.
Thomas was detached on 6 October 1944, after sixteen months in command. The Legion of Merit recognized his service as commanding officer of North Carolina across that whole Pacific tour. He left the ship a rear admiral and next served on the staff of Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations. He retired in 1947.
On 8 November 1944, a month after he turned over North Carolina, the submarine Growler was lost with all hands west of the Philippines. His son, Lieutenant Francis P. Thomas of the Naval Academy class of 1943, was aboard and was reported missing. When the Legion of Merit was awarded, the son was still carried as missing. Frank P. Thomas died on 19 March 1953 in Rockville, Maryland.