Ships
- USS Langley (CV-1) Commander in command from 16 July 1932 · Relieved on 15 June 1933
Patrick N. L. Bellinger was born on 8 October 1885 in Cheraw, South Carolina, the son of Carnot Ambrose Bellinger and Eleanor Lynch. His mother and sister died a few years later, and he was raised by a maternal aunt. His great-uncle was Patrick Neeson Lynch, the third Bishop of Charleston. After a year studying electrical engineering at Clemson College he entered the Naval Academy in 1903 and graduated on 6 June 1907.
As a passed midshipman he sailed around the world with the Great White Fleet in Vermont and Wisconsin. As a young gunnery officer in the new battleship South Carolina his turret guns scored 88.5 percent hits, helping her win the Fleet Gunnery Trophy. Drawn to aviation, he first took submarine training under Lieutenant Chester Nimitz to learn gasoline engines, then went on to fly and become one of the Navy's pioneer aviators. In May 1919 he took part in the Navy's transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to the Azores and received the Navy Cross. In 1932–33 he commanded Langley, the Navy's first carrier.
On 7 December 1941, as Commander Patrol Wing Two at Pearl Harbor, he sent the message "Air raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill," the first word to the outside world of the attack. As a vice admiral (from October 1943) he commanded Naval Air Forces, Atlantic during the fight against the U-boats. He fitted aircraft with microwave search radar and built Combat Information Centers and fighter-director teams into his carriers. He earned the Distinguished Service Medal, an honorary CBE from King George VI, and the Legion of Honour and Croix de Guerre from France.
He sat on the Navy's General Board from 1946 and retired on 1 October 1947 after forty years of service. At his home, "Earlhurst," in Covington, Virginia, he spent ten years as president of the Craig-Botetourt Electric Corporation and later farmed. He married Elsie McKeown, who died in 1920, and then Miriam Benoist, with whom he had four children. He died on 30 May 1962 at Clifton Forge, Virginia, and was buried at Arlington. Norfolk's Bellinger Boulevard bears his name, and in 1981 he was among the first twelve men enshrined in the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor.