Ships
- USS Betelgeuse (AK-28) In command, 7 August 1942
Harry D. Power was born on 2 October 1896 in Buford, Georgia. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the Class of 1920 and made his career in the United States Navy. By 1 July 1940 he held the rank of commander.
On 14 June 1941 he commissioned the cargo ship Betelgeuse (AK-28) at Staten Island, New York, and became her first commanding officer. The ship had been built at Chester, Pennsylvania, for the Moore-McCormack Line as the freighter Mormaclark, then bought by the Navy, renamed, and fitted out for naval service. Through the rest of 1941 she worked with the Atlantic Fleet, practicing amphibious landings off North Carolina and Virginia and carrying cargo to Bermuda and ports in the West Indies. She was in the yard at Charleston when the war with Japan began.
In the winter of 1942 Betelgeuse loaded Army cargo and crossed to Belfast and the Clyde, returning to the United States in March. In April she sailed for the South Pacific and unloaded at Tongatabu in the Tonga Islands. She then went on to the West Coast and Pearl Harbor to take aboard Marine equipment for the coming landing in the Solomon Islands. On 18 June 1942 Power was given the temporary rank of captain.
He was in command of Betelgeuse for the initial occupation of Guadalcanal and Tulagi from 7 to 9 August 1942. The ship put troops and supplies ashore under air attack. The day after the landing her gunners brought down two Japanese planes. Over the following months Power took her back to the islands again and again, running supplies and reinforcements in from Espiritu Santo, Efate, Noumea, Wellington, and Auckland. The ship stood off the beaches only a short part of that time, yet her crew claimed eight enemy aircraft in all and came through with only light damage. She was also present for the fighting around Guadalcanal in mid-November 1942.
For that work the Navy awarded him the Silver Star. The citation, issued in January 1943, credited him with landing men and cargo at Guadalcanal in August, September, and November 1942, and with bringing Betelgeuse through five bombing attacks and two torpedo attacks on those voyages. The ship finished each of those runs without serious damage.
Power left Betelgeuse on 4 February 1943, while she was on the West Coast for overhaul and about to be reclassified as an attack cargo ship. He later commanded the light cruiser Birmingham from 21 November 1944 until 9 August 1945. He retired from the Navy as a rear admiral and died on 14 March 1966.