Ships
- HMS King George V (41) Captain from 15 February 1943 · Relieved on 7 June 1945
Thomas Edgar Halsey was born at South Mimms in Hertfordshire on 28 November 1898. He entered the Royal Navy by special entry in September 1916 and was rated midshipman in January 1917. His first ship was the battleship Resolution, where he served from February 1917 until June 1918. After a fortnight's course in torpedo control he joined the light cruiser Curacoa, and on 28 February 1919 he was appointed to the battleship Iron Duke. He had been made a sub-lieutenant in May 1918 and was promoted lieutenant on 15 February 1920.
Between 1920 and 1928 he played first-class cricket as a right-handed batsman and a right-arm fast bowler, and he also played for a team representing Egypt. He became a lieutenant-commander on 15 February 1928 and a commander on 31 December 1933. His first command was the destroyer Boadicea, from 27 August 1934 to 12 October 1936.
Promotion to captain came on 30 June 1939. On 31 July he took command of the flotilla leader Malcolm and became Captain (D) of the 16th Destroyer Flotilla. In that appointment he was at sea for the evacuation from Dunkirk. On 7 June 1940 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his service in the withdrawal of the Allied armies from those beaches, and on 27 August 1940 he was mentioned in despatches. He left Malcolm on 25 June 1940 and commanded her again from 12 August to 22 October 1940.
On 15 February 1943 Halsey became captain of the battleship King George V, then with the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow. Three days later the ship sailed for Akureyri in Iceland with the heavy cruiser Norfolk and the destroyers Meteor, Icarus, and Forester, wearing the flag of Admiral Sir John Tovey, Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet. Halsey served as flag captain while Tovey's flag was in the ship. A photograph taken on board in July 1943 shows him with Rear-Admiral Arthur William La Touche Bisset, with the barrels of the ship's 14-inch guns behind them.
That summer King George V went to the Mediterranean with the battleship Howe. She was part of the heavy covering force for the Allied landing in Sicily in July 1943, and in September she was again in the cover for the landing at Salerno, in the days when the Italian fleet came over to the Allies. Later, while the battleship was still in home waters, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited her with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. Halsey was with them as charges for the 14-inch guns were rolled across the deck, on a farewell visit before the ship left for the war against Japan.
After a refit, King George V went east. In January 1945, working from Ceylon, she was among the heavy ships that covered the carrier strikes on the oil refineries at Palembang in Sumatra. She then joined the British Pacific Fleet in the Pacific itself. In the spring of 1945, during the battle for Okinawa, the battleship operated against Japanese airfields in the Sakishima Islands, and Vice-Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings flew his flag in her for that work. Halsey was relieved as captain on 7 June 1945 by Brian Betham Schofield.
His last naval appointment was as commodore of the Royal Naval Air Station at Lee-on-Solent, HMS Daedalus, in 1945 and 1946. On 9 December 1946 he was placed on the retired list on medical grounds. On 2 September 1950 he succeeded as the third baronet. In Hertfordshire he was a deputy lieutenant from 1948, a justice of the peace from 1950, a county councillor from 1953, and vice-lieutenant from 1957. He died at Hemel Hempstead on 30 August 1970, aged seventy-one.