Ships
- USS Washington (BB-56) Captain, 23 April 1944 – 16 November 1944
Thomas Ross Cooley, Jr. was born in Grass Valley, California, on 26 June 1893. He graduated from the local high school, received an appointment to the Naval Academy from California, and finished at Annapolis in March 1917, in a class sent to sea early after the United States entered the First World War. His first ship was the battleship Florida. She served with the Sixth Battle Squadron of the British Grand Fleet, and Cooley was aboard when the German High Seas Fleet came in to internment on 21 November 1918.
In the years after the armistice he moved between classrooms at the Naval Academy and duty at sea. He instructed midshipmen in the early 1920s, served as executive officer of the destroyer Pruitt, and later taught at Annapolis again. He was flag secretary of the Special Service Squadron, served on the Asiatic Station, and held a tour in the Bureau of Navigation. Duty in the light cruiser Concord followed, and another stretch on the Academy staff. By 1940 he was a commander and executive officer of the heavy cruiser Wichita. His service in this period included the second Nicaraguan campaign and the Yangtze.
In June 1941 he took command of the attack cargo ship Almaack and carried troops and supplies to Iceland. After the United States entered the war he remained in that ship while she moved Army troops to Belfast and sailors to the new naval base at Londonderry. He was promoted through commander to captain during 1942 and 1943. From June 1942 he served in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, directing officer assignments through the height of wartime expansion, and received a Navy commendation for that work.
On 23 April 1944 Cooley became commanding officer of the battleship Washington. The ship flew the flag of Willis Augustus Lee, who led the fast battleships. Under Cooley she took part in the Marianas campaign, including the landings on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam and the fleet battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944. She supported the capture of Palau, joined the carrier raids that struck Luzon before the return to the Philippines, and was with the fast battleships at Leyte Gulf in October, when those ships ran north against the Japanese carrier force. He left Washington on 16 November 1944. For his command of the ship in the Pacific he received the Legion of Merit.
That November he was advanced to rear admiral and took command of Battleship Division Six, succeeding Lee. Washington and North Carolina served in the division. He led it in the assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. When the war ended he brought his flagship Washington back to the East Coast in company with North Carolina. He then commanded the cruisers and battleships of the Atlantic Fleet and, into 1946, the Fourth Fleet.
In January 1947 Cooley became commander of the naval base at Newport, Rhode Island. In October 1950 he went to the West Coast as deputy commander of the Western Sea Frontier and deputy commander of the Pacific Reserve Fleet. He retired in 1952 and was advanced to vice admiral on the retired list. He died at Quantico, Virginia, on 28 November 1959.