Ships
- USS Rail (AM-26) Lieutenant commander, June 1939 – 31 January 1943 · In command on 7 December 1941 · He was not on board when the attack opened. Ensign R. W. Whalen, USNR, had the duty
Francis Willis Beard was commanding officer of the minesweeper Rail on 7 December 1941, and he was not on board. The report he signed on 11 December says so in the first sentence of the narrative. NavSource lists him as a lieutenant commander, United States Navy, from June 1939 to 31 January 1943.
No birth date, home, or family was found. June 1939, the start NavSource prints, has no day.
No academy class is printed on his NavSource line. No earlier ship was found. He is the officer who had Rail when she was transferred to Pearl Harbor, which her history places eleven months after her return to San Diego in May 1939.
On the morning of the attack Rail was nested port side to in a group of four minesweepers at the Coal Docks. Ensign R. W. Whalen, Naval Reserve, had the duty and was the senior officer on board. Machinist W. F. Fenske was aboard to relieve him. Beard, writing afterward, commended both for cool judgment and said their knowledge of aircraft kept the guns off friendly planes. Whalen suggested moving into the stream. The 3-inch antiaircraft battery opened fifteen minutes after the first bomb, and the .30-caliber guns, rifles, and pistols twenty minutes after the attack. The ships at the dock, except the inboard ship that was under upkeep, got underway and moored to buoys in the target basin. A string of about twenty bombs fell in the channel about sixty yards astern. Shrapnel fell throughout the ship. There were no material losses and no personnel losses. The report states that one plane was shot down. It does not assign that plane to Rail alone, and Beard was not there to see it. The ship's history says the crew was firing .50-caliber guns within minutes. That is not what the report he signed says, and the report is followed here.
Her history says salvage work began soon after the attack, was broken that afternoon for a sweep of the North Channel, resumed on 8 December, and lasted until the 21st. Engines were under repair until 19 January 1942. Three days later she escorted a ship to Johnston Island. On 1 June 1942 she was reclassified the tug AT-139 and stayed in Hawaiian waters on antisubmarine patrol, experimental sweeping, salvage, and towing. On 26 January 1943 she sailed for Samoa with two barges. NavSource dates Beard's relief, by Lieutenant (junior grade) Leslie Charles Oaks, on 31 January, while that passage was still at sea. She arrived in Samoa on 11 February, under the next captain if the dates are taken as written.
No command after 31 January 1943, and no later rank or date of death, was found.