Ships
- USS McDermut (DD-677) Captain from 19 November 1943
P. L. Wirtz, Peyton Louis Wirtz, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on 6 January 1907. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1931 and served as a regular officer of the United States Navy through the years before the Pacific war. In the summer of 1942 he was a lieutenant. He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 15 June 1942 and to commander on 1 November 1942, the rank he held for the rest of his wartime sea commands.
In May 1942 Wirtz took command of the high-speed minesweeper Zane (DMS-14), a former destroyer assigned to minesweeping work. He stayed in that ship until 7 September 1943. During the same tour, in August 1942, the Navy awarded him the Navy Cross.
His next ship was still being built when he was ordered to her. The Fletcher-class destroyer McDermut (DD-677) was laid down on 14 June 1943 at the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Kearny, New Jersey, and went down the ways on 17 October 1943. Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, widow of the twenty-eighth president, sponsored the ship at the launching. On 19 November 1943 McDermut was commissioned, and Commander P. L. Wirtz became her first commanding officer.
McDermut remained on the east coast through the end of 1943. She sailed from New York on 25 January 1944 for duty with the Pacific Fleet and reached Kwajalein on 4 March. After staying in the lagoon until 20 March, she moved on to Majuro and joined Task Force 58, the fast carrier force. On 22 March she put to sea with Task Group 58.2. Through the cruise that followed, the carriers struck the Palau Islands, Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai, with McDermut in the screen, and the group was back at Majuro on 6 April. The destroyer was then assigned to cargo and escort work and headed toward Pearl Harbor. Wirtz left the ship on 10 May 1944. Wirtz died on 24 February 1979 in St. Johns County, Florida, at the age of seventy-two.