Ships
- USS Missouri (BB-63) Captain, 19 April 1950 – 2 March 1951
Irving T. Duke, of Richmond, Virginia, graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1924 and served a career that closed with retirement as a vice admiral. The seagoing command that defined his public record was the battleship Missouri, which he led as captain from 19 April 1950 to 2 March 1951. She was then the Navy’s only battleship in commission, and within months of his taking her the Korean War sent her back across the Pacific.
By the Aleutian campaign of 1943 he was a captain on a joint Army and Navy staff. From May through August that year he was operations officer for the planning and the occupation of Attu and Kiska. He received the Legion of Merit for the way he fitted the movements of the assault forces into a single operation.
The battleship he later commanded had just come through a hard winter. On 17 January 1950, with William D. Brown in command, Missouri grounded near Thimble Shoal Light while standing out of Hampton Roads on a training sortie. Tugs, pontoons, and a rising tide freed her on 1 February. Brown was relieved, and Harold P. Smith took command on 7 February while the repairs were finished. On 19 April 1950, at Norfolk Naval Station, Duke read his orders on the after deck and succeeded Smith.
War in Korea pulled Missouri out of Atlantic training. She left Norfolk on 19 August 1950, and the passage was urgent enough that on 20 August Duke took her through a hurricane off North Carolina. The storm swept her helicopters off the stern and left damage that took nearly a week to repair after she reached Pearl Harbor. On 14 September she was west of Kyushu, serving as flagship for Rear Admiral Allan Edward Smith. From 15 September 1950 through 28 February 1951, Duke commanded both Missouri and a task group assigned to naval gunfire support against enemy forces in Korea. Along the peninsula’s east coast the ship moved between carrier escort and shore bombardment for the rest of his time aboard.
He was relieved on 2 March 1951. Missouri stayed in the western Pacific through the rest of the month, reached Yokosuka on 24 March, sailed for home on 28 March, and arrived at Norfolk on 27 April. A second Legion of Merit, marked by a gold star, recognized his months as commanding officer of Missouri and of the gunfire-support task group. He retired from the Navy as a vice admiral.