Ships
- USS Missouri (BB-63) Commander, 3 February 1950 – 7 February 1950
George Edward Peckham was born in Cresco, Iowa, on 27 November 1908. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1931 and spent his career in the surface navy, mostly in destroyers, before retiring in 1959 as a rear admiral.
His first ship was the light cruiser Cincinnati. He then moved into the destroyer force and served in Boggs and Overton during the years before the war, learning the navigation and shiphandling that later defined his reputation.
During the Aleutian campaign he was an operations officer on a destroyer squadron staff. In March 1943 he took part in the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, a long daylight gun action in which an American cruiser and destroyer group met a stronger Japanese squadron. He received the Silver Star for that service.
On 3 October 1943 he took command of the destroyer Selfridge. Three nights later, off Vella Lavella in the Solomons, Selfridge and two other American destroyers intercepted a Japanese force trying to evacuate troops. Peckham closed the range, launched torpedoes, and followed with gunfire. A Japanese torpedo blew off Selfridge's bow. He kept the damaged destroyer in hand until she could be brought into port for rebuilding, and he was awarded a second Silver Star. He left Selfridge in February 1944.
On 7 June 1944 he took command of the new destroyer Waldron and, after shakedown, took her into the Pacific to screen fast carriers. On the night of 18 February 1945, during operations in Japanese home waters, he turned Waldron onto an enemy picket boat that was trying to slip through the screen and rammed it. His third Silver Star covered Waldron's fighting from 10 February to 4 March 1945. He remained in command through the end of the war, until November 1945.
After the war he served on the staff of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet and then became executive officer of the battleship Missouri. On the morning of 17 January 1950 the ship left Hampton Roads for training and, while shaping up to run an acoustic range, strayed out of the channel and grounded on Thimble Shoal near Old Point Comfort. Peckham was second in command under Captain William D. Brown, who had told him to keep to the administration of the ship and to leave navigation to the navigator and the operations officer. From his station Peckham still warned that Missouri was standing into shoal water, called for an immediate turn to starboard, and asked that the engines be worked against each other so the battleship could swing as hard as possible. She held on and drove up onto the mud. Tugs, pontoons, and the tide refloated her on 1 February. Brown was later convicted of neglect of duty.
Peckham commanded Missouri from 3 February to 7 February 1950, in the rank of commander. The four days fell in the short interval after the grounding, with the ship afloat again and her captain gone. In April 1950 he was still the executive officer, and at Norfolk he testified in the courts-martial about the order that had narrowed his duties on the bridge before the ship ever sailed.
He later served in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and in 1953 and 1954 commanded the attack transport Menifee. From 1957 until his retirement in 1959 he directed amphibious training in the Atlantic Fleet. Peckham died on 14 September 1998.