Background
Donald Bradford Beary was born on December 4, 1888, in Helena, Montana, the son of Lorenzo Dow Bradford, a civil engineer, and Melinda Ervin.
Donald Bradford Beary was born on December 4, 1888, in Helena, Montana, the son of Lorenzo Dow Bradford, a civil engineer, and Melinda Ervin.
After graduating from Helena High School in 1906, Donald entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and completed his studies in 1910. Later he studied electrical engineering, first at the Naval Postgraduate School at Annapolis and then at Columbia University in New York, where he was awarded an M. S. degree in 1917.
In common with all Naval Academy graduates of the time, Donald was then appointed a passed midshipman and, having served satisfactorily for two years, was commissioned an ensign on March 7, 1912. He served on the armored cruisers Tennessee, Washington, and Maryland until September 1915. During the next two years, he studied electrical engineering. Beary returned to sea on the destroyer Warrington in the spring of 1917. He assumed his first command, that of the destroyer Remlik, in February 1918. He was promoted to the temporary grade of lieutenant commander in July 1918. For most of that year, he was engaged in patrolling North Atlantic waters infested with enemy submarines and mines, escorting convoys carrying troops and supplies while participating in offensive and defensive actions. He was awarded the Navy Cross for his wartime activities. Beary briefly reported for fitting-out duty on the destroyer Edwards at the Bethlehem Ship-building Yards in Squantum, Massachussets, in December 1918 but was detached before that vessel was commissioned.
From January 1919 until March 1921, Beary was assigned to the Officers Records Section of the Bureau of Navigation, in the Navy Department in Washington, D. C. He returned to sea in April 1921 and was made a permanent lieutenant commander that June. In the next twenty-nine months, Beary successively commanded the destroyers Talbot, Parrott, and Summer in the Pacific. Returning to Washington, he was assigned to duty in the Division of Fleet Training in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He remained in that post until December 1925, when he was named navigating officer on the battleship New Mexico. From August 1928 until February 1930, Beary was an instructor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Physics at Annapolis. Promoted to the rank of commander in April 1930, he served as aide to the superintendent of the academy until reassigned in July 1931. For the next three years, he served as assistant chief of staff to the commander in chief of the Asiatic Fleet, on the heavy cruisers Houston and Augusta, successively flagships for the fleet.
In July 1934 Beary was reassigned to the Navy Department in Washington for duty in the Fleet Maintenance Division of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He remained there until June 1936, when he was assigned to undertake the senior course at the Naval War College in Newport, R. I. From June 1937 until April 1938, Beary was executive officer of the battleship Colorado; he was then placed in command of the light cruiser Richmond. In June 1938 he was promoted to captain. One year later he returned to the Naval Academy as officer in charge of buildings and grounds and aide to the superintendent. In May 1941 he took command of a former United States Army transport, the Washington. The vessel was renamed the Mount Vernon, and Beary assumed command of it on June 16, 1941. In September of that year, while retaining this command, Beary was designated commander of Transport Division 19. Two months later the Mount Vernon, under Beary's command, was assigned to Convoy WS-12X, under Rear Admiral Arthur B. Cook, with orders to help transport nearly 20, 000 British troops from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to support the British garrison at Singapore.
The troops were landed at the latter port in mid-January 1942, in the midst of the Japanese attack. Beary evacuated women and children from the city despite continuing Japanese air raids and the difficulties of negotiating some of the heavily mined waters south of the city. Beary was then detached from the convoy and steamed for Suez via Aden, where he picked up some 4, 500 Australian troops for transport to Fremantle, Australia. There the Mount Vernon took on some survivors from the Corregidor and Java Sea operations, together with refugees from the Netherlands East Indies, and took them to San Francisco, arriving at the end of March 1942. Two months later Beary was promoted to the temporary grade of rear admiral. He was the first native of Montana to have reached flag rank.
Following the disbandment of Transport Division 19 in June 1942, Beary served as commandant of the Naval Operations Base in Iceland. Then, in February 1943, he was made commander of the Fleet Operational Training Command, Atlantic Fleet, headquartered at Camp Allen, near Norfolk, Virginia. This assignment entailed supervision of all training facilities, except for those having to do with submarines and landing craft. In this capacity, Beary served, in effect, as "Chancellor of the United States Antisubmarine University. " He had charge of some eighteen sound schools and antisubmarine training and refresher centers from Newfoundland, Canada, to Recife, Brazil. For his performance in this post, he received the Distinguished Service Medal.
In November 1944, Beary reported for duty with the Pacific Fleet, where he assisted with the organization of a logistic support group known as Service Squadron 6. Operating under strict secrecy for the remainder of the war in the Pacific, Beary's command served in direct logistic support of the Iwo Jima and Okinawa invasions mounted by the Fifth Fleet under Admiral Raymond S. Spruance, the amphibious force under Vice-Admiral Richmond K. Turner, and the fast carrier forces under Vice-Admiral Marc Mitscher. Under Beary's leadership, Service Squadron 6 became a revolutionary new mobile underway replenishment logistical support force. This naval element made the traditional and time-consuming return of the fleet to port for resupply unnecessary. Instead, the highly mobile vessels of Service Squadron 6 brought all needed logistical support to the combat units. Beary and his staff overcame the problems posed by the enormous distances involved in the Pacific war.
With his replenishment forces at sea, the fleets he was supporting could retire a few hundred miles for refueling, rearming, and reprovisioning and then strike again at the enemy with minimal delay. In the words of a navy press release, his command was the fleet's "ace in the hole. " Within a short period of time, Service Squadron 6, originally organized on an experimental basis, became an established naval logistical unit. Beary was awarded the Legion of Merit with a Gold Star for his actions during the period from January to September 1945. Squadron 6 ultimately supported Admiral William F. Halsey's Third Fleet as it ranged up and down the coast of Japan in the closing months of the war. During this period Beary's flagship was the light cruiser Detroit. He later reported that his operations were "limited only by battle damage and human and mechanical endurance. "
Beary was present for the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Beary was then made administrator of the United States Naval Shipping Control Authority for the Japanese merchant marine. He had responsibility for the repatriation of some 5 million Japanese troops from their final duty stations in Asia and the Pacific. On April 1, 1946, Beary became commandant of the Twelfth Naval District at San Francisco, which over the next two years included command of the San Francisco Naval Base, the Western Sea Frontier, and the Pacific Reserve Fleet. Promoted to vice-admiral in October 1948, Beary was assigned on November 1 of that year as president of the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island. He retired on October 1, 1950, concluding forty years of active duty. Beary settled in Coronado, California. Beary died in San Diego, California.
Donald Beary was a member of the Navy Gun Club.
On January 15, 1919, Donald Beary married Alice Lovett Keene, the daughter of a retired army officer; they had one child. His wife died in March 1953, and in October 1955 he married Mary Louise Robnett, a widow.