Ships
- USS Hazelwood (DD-531) Captain from 18 June 1943
Commander Hunter Wood was the first captain of Hazelwood. The ship was a Fletcher-class destroyer, the second in the Navy to bear the name, built by Bethlehem Shipbuilding at San Francisco. Workers laid her keel on 11 April 1942, and she was launched on 20 November 1942 with Mrs. Harold J. Fosdick as sponsor. On 18 June 1943 she commissioned, and Wood, entered in the commissioning record as Hunter Wood, Jr., took command as a commander.
Her first months went to fitting out and shakedown on the West Coast. On 5 September 1943 Hazelwood sailed for Hawaii and reached Pearl Harbor on 9 September. Two days later she left with a fast carrier force under Rear Admiral C. A. Pownall, whose flag was in Lexington, to cover air strikes on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. She next joined a larger striking group under Rear Admiral A. E. Montgomery, six carriers with seven cruisers and twenty-four destroyers, for attacks on Wake Island on 5 and 6 October.
Hazelwood returned to Pearl Harbor on 11 October, and the crew trained for the amphibious advance across the central Pacific. On 5 November she joined Vice Admiral R. A. Spruance’s Task Force 53 at Havannah Harbor in the New Hebrides. The force sailed on 13 November. When the Gilberts landings opened on 20 November, Hazelwood patrolled for submarines and stood by to direct friendly fighters while the assault troops fought ashore.
Wood’s command ran from the commissioning day of 18 June 1943 until 1 January 1944, when another officer relieved him. The ship’s later wartime operations, from the Marshalls onward, fell to the captains who followed. On 29 April 1945, off Okinawa, a kamikaze hit Hazelwood at the bridge during a later captain’s tour and killed that commanding officer along with many of the crew.
Hazelwood finished the Pacific war, then left active service on 18 January 1946 for the reserve fleet at San Diego. She recommissioned there on 12 September 1951, with R. M. Niles in command, as the Navy expanded for the Korean War.