Richard Gary Colbert (February 12, 1915 – December 2, 1973) was a four-star admiral in the United States Navy who served as President of the Naval War College from 1968 to 1971, and as commander in chief of all NATO forces in southern Europe from 1972 to 1973. He was nicknamed "Mr. International Navy" as one of the very few senior admirals in the U.S. Navy identified with international naval cooperation during the Cold War.
Early career
Born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania to Charles F. Colbert, Jr., president of the Pittsburgh Metallurgical Company, and the former Marie Louise Benford, he attended Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before being appointed to the United States Naval Academy by Congressman Harry A. Estep in 1933. He graduated from the Naval Academy in June 1937 as one of the four midshipmen officers appointed to command a battalion of the Naval Academy regiment for that academic year, with a class rank of 247/331.
World War II
Commissioned ensign, he served aboard the aircraft carrier from its commissioning on September 30, 1937, until 1939, when he was assigned to the destroyer Barker in the Asiatic Fleet. He remained aboard Barker for the next five years, rising from junior ensign to lieutenant commander and commanding officer.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Barker operated with the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) in Southeast Asian and Australian waters until May 1942, then escorted convoys between San Francisco, California, and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, until May 1943, when the destroyer transferred to the Atlantic Fleet to join Task Group 21.12, a hunter-killer group centered on the escort carrier Core.
In 1944, he assumed command of the destroyer Meade, operating with the Pacific Fleet. After the war, Meade was sent on a relief sweep along Tonkin Gulf coastal areas to assist French forces in combating Chinese pirates off Haiphong. Promoted to commander, Colbert spent the next two and a half years as personnel planning officer in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, where he helped plan the postwar naval reserve and served as a social aide in the White House.
Postwar
In June 1948 he was sent to London as aide and flag secretary to Admiral Richard L. Conolly, Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean (CINCNELM). A superb negotiator, Conolly left a deep impression on Colbert, whose later work on international naval cooperation would be founded on the lessons he learned by watching Conolly interact with allied naval leaders. When Conolly's tour as CINCNELM ended in December 1950, Colbert briefly accompanied Conolly to the admiral's new posting as president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
Colbert's next assignment was in the Politico-Military Affairs Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OP-35), where he helped establish the naval commands in the newly created NATO alliance and quickly developed a reputation for familiarity with allied problems and ability to deal with foreign governments. In 1951, Chief of Naval Operations Forrest P. Sherman selected Colbert to be his aide later in the year, in the meantime tapping Colbert for temporary duty as Sherman's special assistant during overseas trips. In July 1951, Colbert accompanied Sherman to Spain to negotiate naval basing with General Francisco Franco. Shortly after the meeting, Sherman suddenly died of a heart attack. With no written record of Sherman's conversations with Franco, it fell to Colbert to debrief the late admiral's negotiations to the Navy Department and other government agencies.
From 1953 to 1955, Colbert was executive officer of the heavy cruiser Albany, which served as flagship for Commander, Battleship-Cruiser Force, Atlantic, and was deployed to the Mediterranean. Vice Admiral Robert H. Rice, his former commanding officer, remembered Colbert as "the best executive officer any ship had had (or the good fortune to have)."
Promoted to captain in 1955, Colbert was offered a choice between assignment as head of an academic section at the Naval Academy or as a student at the Naval War College. On Conolly's advice, Colbert opted for the Naval War College and was enrolled in the naval warfare 1 course. By January 1956 he had been selected to remain for a second academic year as a student in the naval warfare 2 course, but was reassigned that spring to become the first director of a new Naval War College course for international naval officers.