Ships
- USS North Carolina (BB-55) Captain, 1 February 1946 – 27 June 1947
Timothy J. O'Brien, a captain in the United States Navy, assumed command of the battleship North Carolina on 1 February 1946. He relieved Byron H. Hanlon and became the ship's last commanding officer. The fighting in the Pacific was already over, and the battleship commissioned at New York in April 1941 was entering the final stretch of her active service.
The captains before him were Olaf M. Hustvedt, who had the ship when she went into commission, then Oscar C. Badger, George H. Fort, Wilder D. Baker, Frank P. Thomas, Frank George Fahrion, Oswald S. Colclough, and Hanlon. Under that succession North Carolina, known in the fleet as Showboat, had spent the war as a fast carrier escort and a ship used for shore bombardment. O'Brien's tour was the peacetime work that followed: keeping a veteran battleship in order and bringing her toward reserve.
In 1946 North Carolina operated for a short time off the East Coast. She was underway on 3 June of that year. After an overhaul at New York she exercised in New England waters and carried Naval Academy midshipmen on a summer training cruise in the Caribbean, the last ordinary sea duty of her commissioned life.
O'Brien stayed aboard through inactivation. On 27 June 1947, at New York, North Carolina was decommissioned and placed in reserve, and his command ended the same day. The ship remained on the Navy's rolls until she was struck on 1 June 1960. She passed to the state of North Carolina in 1961 and was dedicated at Wilmington on 29 April 1962 as a memorial to North Carolinians killed in the Second World War.