Ships
- USS Missouri (BB-63) Captain, 4 September 1952 – 26 March 1953
Captain Warner R. Edsall, born Warner Ryerson Edsall on 4 May 1904 in Hamburg, New Jersey, graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1927 and spent his career in the United States Navy. On 4 September 1952 he took command of the battleship Missouri. He was still her captain on 26 March 1953, when a heart attack killed him at the age of forty-eight while he was conning the ship into Sasebo, Japan.
His early sea duty was in submarines. He served as executive officer of Pompano in the late 1930s and, from 31 January to 3 April 1939, as her acting commanding officer. On 31 May 1940 he assumed command of S-34 and remained in that billet until April 1941.
After the United States entered the Second World War, Edsall was assistant operations officer on the staff of the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet. He returned to command at sea in November 1943 as commanding officer of the destroyer Melvin in the Pacific, and he received the Legion of Merit for his service in that billet on 13 June 1944. In the fall of 1944 he became commander of Destroyer Division 110. He later served as chief of staff to the commander of Cruiser Division 13 in the Pacific Fleet and in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. His decorations from those years also included five Bronze Star Medals and both the Army Commendation Ribbon and the Navy Commendation Ribbon.
In April 1947 he took command of Destroyer Squadron 8. The following year he became assistant chief of staff for operations to the Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet. He graduated from the National War College in 1951 and was assigned to duty with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from that post he was ordered to Missouri.
The ship he joined already held a singular place in the Navy. On 2 September 1945 the Japanese surrender had been signed aboard her, with Chester William Nimitz signing for the United States and William Frederick Halsey, Jr. among the senior officers present. Edsall's cruise was her second deployment to the Korean fighting. Missouri sailed from Hampton Roads on 11 September 1952, arrived at Yokosuka on 17 October, and on 19 October broke the flag of Vice Admiral J. J. Clark, Commander Seventh Fleet. In the same period Edsall also served as commander of Task Group 70.1.
On the gun line, Missouri fired along the east coast of North Korea. Her targets ran through the Chaho and Tanchon area, Chongjin, the coast between Tanchon and Songjin, and the harbors and towns of Chaho, Wonsan, Hamhung, and Hungnam, from late October 1952 into the first days of January 1953. On 5 November 1952 Edsall stood on the bridge and watched the results of recent fire against transportation routes ashore. The battleship called at Inchon on 5 January 1953 and went on to Sasebo. On 23 January she received General Mark W. Clark, commander in chief of the United Nations Command, and Admiral Sir Guy Russell, commanding the British Far East Station.
She returned to patrol along the Korean east coast in direct support of troops ashore. Further bombardments at Wonsan, Tanchon, Hungnam, and Kojo struck the supply routes that followed that shore. The last of those missions, against the Kojo area, was fired on 25 March 1953. On the morning of 26 March, Edsall was at the conn, bringing Missouri in through the submarine net at Sasebo, when he suffered a fatal heart attack on the bridge. His command ended that day.
The Navy afterward awarded him, posthumously, a Gold Star in lieu of a second Legion of Merit, with the combat V, for his conduct as commanding officer of Missouri and as commander of Task Group 70.1. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Margaret Harriman Edsall, of Arlington, Virginia, their daughter, Margaret Katherine, then twenty, and their son, Robert Harriman, then eighteen.