Ships
- USS Nevada (BB-36) Captain from 4 October 1944 · Relieved on 28 October 1945
Homer Louis Grosskopf was born in Minnesota on 12 July 1892. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1916 and served as a junior officer in the First World War. On 2 October 1918 he took command of the destroyer Decatur. He stayed in that command until 20 June 1919, the day the old destroyer was placed out of commission.
He was promoted to commander on 1 July 1936. Early in 1942, with the United States at war, the Navy advanced him to captain. The temporary rank dated from 1 January 1942, and the permanent rank from 1 April 1942.
On 4 October 1944 Grosskopf became commanding officer of the battleship Nevada (BB-36), relieving Powell M. Rhea. Nevada had entered service in 1916 under William Sowden Sims. Joseph Strauss commanded her from the end of 1916 into 1918, during the First World War. Raised and rebuilt after Pearl Harbor, she had already fought in the Aleutians, covered the landings in Normandy, and shelled the coast of southern France. Grosskopf joined her as she finished a refit that relined her heavy guns for another Pacific cruise.
Under Grosskopf, Nevada sailed for the western Pacific and arrived off Iwo Jima on 16 February 1945. She bombarded the island through 7 March. On 17 February, two days before the Marines landed, Japanese guns opened on a line of infantry landing craft that were putting frogmen in to look over the beaches. Three of the craft were sunk. Grosskopf closed the battleship toward the shore and turned her guns on the positions that had just shown themselves. The 5-inch mounts fired at a furious rate, and wounded men were brought alongside from the damaged craft. When the assault began, Nevada moved to within about 600 yards of the beach so her fire would fall close in front of the troops.
Grosskopf next took Nevada to Okinawa. In the last days of March 1945 she joined the bombardment that prepared the island for invasion, and she remained off the beaches through much of the long battle ashore. On 27 March a shore battery hit the ship, and a kamikaze crashed on the main deck near the after 14-inch turret. Members of the crew were killed and wounded. The guns kept firing. On 1 April, when Army and Marine troops landed, Nevada was still on the gun line in their support.
The war ended while he still had the ship. He was relieved on 28 October 1945. Grosskopf retired as a rear admiral. He died in San Francisco on 12 June 1953 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.