Ships
- USS Fomalhaut (AK-22) In command, 7 August 1942
Commander Henry C. Flanagan of the United States Navy, whose home was Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was in command of the cargo ship Fomalhaut on 7 August 1942. That morning United States Marines went ashore at Guadalcanal and Tulagi, the opening American land offensive of the Pacific war, and his ship was with the force that put men and equipment on the beaches.
Fomalhaut had been built for the Maritime Commission as the freighter Cape Lookout at Pennsylvania Shipyards in Beaumont, Texas. Launched on 25 January 1941 and taken over by the Navy that May, she was commissioned on 2 March 1942 as AK-22. The name came from Fomalhaut, a bright star in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus. She reached Samoa on 8 May 1942 with passengers and cargo from the east coast. On 22 June she sailed for Wellington, New Zealand, loaded there from the end of June until 22 July, exercised in the Fiji Islands, and then joined the sortie for the Solomons.
On 7 August Fomalhaut lay off the landing beaches. Still at anchor two days later, her company was close enough to watch the night battle off Savo Island. That same day, 9 August, she sailed for Nouméa to take on more men and supplies for Guadalcanal. She returned on 23 August and was ordered to take the destroyer Blue in tow after Blue had been torpedoed the day before. Through the rest of the summer and the autumn, Flanagan kept the ship on the Guadalcanal run while Japanese aircraft, submarines, and surface forces still pressed the island.
For that duty, from August through November 1942, he received the Silver Star. The award recognized the way he handled the ship on repeated passages into the Guadalcanal area, landing reinforcements and equipment each time without loss of life among his people and without damage to the vessel.
He later served as a captain. From January 1944 to April 1945 he was commander of Transport Division 28 and commander of Transport Squadron 15. For that amphibious command duty he was awarded the Legion of Merit.