Ships
- USS Louisville (CA-28) Captain from 19 October 1945 · Relieved on 10 April 1946
Thomas Tyler Beattie, born in 1899, served his career in the United States Navy and rose to captain. He and his wife, Katharine Brown Beattie, lived for many years in Coronado, California, and raised a son and a daughter in a Navy household. He died in 1966.
Before the Pacific war he served with the Asiatic Fleet. In 1937 the family left the China port of Chefoo with other Navy families as the fleet braced for a crisis with Japan. He also served in the minesweeper Bittern and the destroyer Peary. Japanese aircraft wrecked Bittern at the Cavite navy yard on 10 December 1941, and the ship was later scuttled. Peary was sunk by Japanese aircraft at Darwin, Australia, on 19 February 1942.
On 7 December 1941 Beattie was a lieutenant commander and the navigator of the battleship West Virginia, moored on Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor. He was finishing breakfast in the wardroom when the officer of the deck called away the fire and rescue party. He went topside with the commanding officer, Captain Mervyn Bennion. Torpedoes had already torn the port side, the ship was listing, and bombs were falling as they reached the bridge. A fragment struck Bennion in the abdomen. Beattie eased him down, loosened his collar, and sent for a pharmacist's mate while Bennion kept giving orders. The forward magazines of Arizona then exploded close aboard. Beattie was given charge of getting the wounded off West Virginia while the attack continued. The battleship settled on the harbor bottom. Salvage crews raised her in 1942, and she went back to war.
The heavy cruiser Louisville (CA-28) was a Northampton-class ship, commissioned at the Puget Sound Navy Yard on 15 January 1931 under Edward J. Marquart. In 1944 she flew the flag of Rear Admiral Jesse Barrett Oldendorf for the gunfire support of landings from the Marshall Islands through the Philippines. Kamikaze aircraft hit her in Lingayen Gulf in January 1945 and again off Okinawa that June. She received thirteen battle stars.
Beattie took command of Louisville as captain on 19 October 1945 and was relieved on 10 April 1946. Japan had surrendered in September. His months in the ship were spent bringing a battle-worn cruiser and her crew through the first half-year of peace.
After leaving Louisville he commanded the San Diego Naval Base, a shore assignment near the family's home in Coronado. His son, Thomas T. Beattie, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1951 and later served in Korea and Vietnam. Captain Beattie died in 1966.