Ships
- USS Missouri (BB-63) Captain, 2 March 1951 – 18 October 1951
Captain George T. Wright, United States Navy, commanded the battleship Missouri (BB-63) from 2 March 1951 until 18 October 1951. He took command at Yokosuka, Japan, and spoke to the crew as he assumed charge. The ship was near the end of a long Korean War deployment, and the work in front of him was to finish that cruise and bring her home.
Missouri was already one of the best-known ships in the Navy. Commissioned on 11 June 1944 with William M. Callaghan in command, she had fought off Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and on 2 September 1945 the Japanese surrender was signed on her quarterdeck. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur presided. Chester William Nimitz signed for the United States, and William Frederick Halsey, Jr. stood with the senior officers present. Stuart S. Murray was her captain that day. She remained in commission after the war while the other American battleships went into reserve. On 17 January 1950, under William D. Brown, with George E. Peckham as executive officer, she ran aground on Thimble Shoal in Chesapeake Bay and was not afloat again until 1 February. Brown was court-martialed. She returned to training, and in August 1950, after fighting began in Korea, she sailed for the western Pacific.
That first Korean cruise was largely complete before Wright read his orders. In September 1950 Missouri had been the first American battleship to reach Korean waters. She bombarded Samchok on 15 September in connection with the landings at Inchon, screened aircraft carriers, and shelled the east coast through the autumn. Late in December she lay off Hungnam and covered the evacuation until the last United Nations troops, among them the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, left by sea on Christmas Eve. From 2 March 1951 the remaining east-coast firing and screening were carried out under Wright. Those operations ended around the middle of the month. Late in March she was back at Yokosuka, was released from duty in the Far East, and on 28 March sailed for home. She reached Norfolk on 27 April 1951 and became flagship for Rear Admiral J. L. Holloway, Jr., commander of the Atlantic Fleet cruiser force.
The summer was given to training. Wright took Missouri on two midshipman cruises to northern Europe, then brought her back to the Virginia coast. On 18 October 1951 his command ended, and the battleship entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for an overhaul that lasted until 30 January 1952. In a little more than seven months he had closed out a war cruise, flown an admiral's flag in the Atlantic, and carried midshipmen across the ocean before the ship went into the yard.