Ships
- USS Nevada (BB-36) Captain from 15 December 1941 · Relieved on 25 August 1942
Harry LeRoy Thompson was born on 18 March 1890. He spent his career in the United States Navy and was promoted to commander on 23 June 1938. Navy records give his home as Reading, Pennsylvania. On 16 June 1942, during his command of a battleship, he received the temporary rank of captain.
He took command of the battleship Nevada (BB-36) on 15 December 1941, relieving Francis W. Scanland. Scanland had been captain on 7 December, when Nevada got underway in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack, was struck by a torpedo and by bombs, and was beached so the channel would stay open. Thompson came aboard eight days later. The ship lay aground, holed and burned, with a crew that had already fought her through the raid.
The work that followed was raising and repairing the ship. Nevada was refloated in February 1942 and entered Dry Dock No. 2 at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard on 18 February. Crews and yard workers cleared wreckage, patched the hull, and made her fit to steam. She then went to the Puget Sound Navy Yard for a long reconstruction of hull, battery, and superstructure. Thompson stayed in command through the first months of that overhaul. Howard F. Kingman relieved him on 25 August 1942.
His later wartime command was the light cruiser Richmond (CL-9). He served as her commanding officer from 27 March 1944 to 17 August 1945, with the temporary rank of captain. In those months Richmond was flagship of a combat task force in the North Pacific. He left the ship on 17 August 1945, in the week hostilities with Japan ended. The Legion of Merit was awarded for his service as her commanding officer on that station.
The two ships mark the two halves of his war. On Nevada he took over a battleship wrecked at Pearl Harbor and carried her from the mud, through a dock, and into a navy yard for rebuilding. On Richmond he commanded a cruiser flagship on the northern route until the fighting ended.