Ships
- USS Intrepid (CV-11) Captain from 11 April 1946 · Relieved on 4 November 1946
Henry Gabriel Sanchez was a captain in the United States Navy. On 11 April 1946 he assumed command of the aircraft carrier Intrepid. He remained her commanding officer until he was relieved on 4 November 1946.
Intrepid, hull number CV-11, was an Essex-class fleet carrier. She had entered service in August 1943 with Thomas Lamison Sprague as her first commanding officer, and through the rest of the Pacific war she operated with the fast carrier forces. Her aircraft struck Japanese ships, airfields, and island bases. Battle damage sent her back for repair more than once before the fighting ended.
Sanchez came aboard in the first spring after Japan's surrender. The carrier war was finished, reservists were going home, and wartime air groups were being broken up. The Navy was sorting a huge fleet into the smaller force it meant to keep. Intrepid was still in commission, and the captain was responsible for her from the flight deck to the engineering plant.
His tour covered the summer and early autumn of 1946. The work was the care of a large carrier with a reduced ship's company: upkeep of the hull and machinery, readiness of the flight deck, and such time at sea as the peacetime fleet still asked of her while her future was settled. On 4 November 1946 he turned the ship over to his relief.
Intrepid was decommissioned on 22 March 1947 and placed in reserve. The Navy later returned her to service for a long second career, and she is preserved as a museum ship in New York. Sanchez's command fell in that first peacetime year, while she was still an active ship of the fleet and the Navy was preparing to lay her up.