Ships
- USS Louisville (CA-28) Captain from 12 December 1940 · Relieved on 1 February 1941
Harold Joachim Nelson was born on 28 March 1891. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1914 and made his career in the United States Navy. He was promoted to commander on 30 June 1935 and to captain on 1 May 1941.
Early in 1925 he commanded the submarine S-26, one of the Navy’s S-class boats. That sea appointment came many years before the cruiser command for which his name is tied to the prewar Pacific Fleet.
On 12 December 1940 Commander Nelson took command of the heavy cruiser Louisville (CA-28), relieving Frank Thompson Leighton. The Northampton-class ship had been built at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, launched on 1 September 1930, and commissioned on 15 January 1931 with Edward J. Marquart as her first commanding officer. In July 1931 the London Naval Treaty reclassified her from a light cruiser to a heavy cruiser, and her designation changed from CL-28 to CA-28. She carried nine 8-inch guns. Through the 1930s she served mainly with the United States Fleet in the Pacific, and her cruises also took her to the Caribbean, the Atlantic coast, Latin America, and, in 1938, Australia, Tahiti, and Samoa.
His time in the ship was short. Elliott Bodley Nixon relieved him on 1 February 1941, about seven weeks after he had assumed command. He left Louisville still a commander, with the United States months away from war in the Pacific. His promotion to captain was dated 1 May 1941. The cruiser remained in service and later fought through the Pacific war under the commanding officers who followed him, including escort and bombardment duty and kamikaze damage off Lingayen Gulf in January 1945 and off Okinawa in June 1945.