William Beaman was born in October 1924 in Dayton, Ohio, the only boy of three children. His father died when he was nine years old, and Beaman went to work on a truck farm. After he graduated high school, he took a job with the National Cash Register Company, but when war broke out he decided to join the military. He was interested in submarines and enlisted in the Navy in 1942. He was inducted in Cincinnati, Ohio then went to Great Lakes, Illinois for four weeks of boot camp after which he attended diesel school at the Navy Pier in Chicago, Illinois. He then volunteered for submarine school and, being mechanically inclined, qualified for training as an engineman. He actually became an auxiliaryman, a fixer of anything and everything, and trained on 1918 vintage O-Boats, which were not what he would serve on. The vessels were small, hand-operated models with a tiny galley that had no seating, and an open toilet. It could only reach depths of 60-80 feet, and the sailors had to simulate deeper dives. From there he went to Key West, Florida for a couple of months to train on R-Boats, which were a little newer but similar in operation, and practiced dives-and-surfaces, the men rotating from station to station to become familiar with all the positions. Beaman found the training interesting.

Assigned to the commissioning crew of the USS Flasher (SS-249), William Beaman went back to Groton, Connecticut to train under a totally new concept called the "school of the boat" where the sailors would go into the boat, then come back to the classroom to share what they had learned with the other members of the crew. They took the new submarine out on sea trials with Electric Boat Company workers to test its equipment, and determine if it could survive patrols. Beaman said it was then they learned the intricacies of the boat, and become acquainted with their fellow crewmembers. When there were more people on board than accommodations, they practiced "hot bunking," where three guys shared two bunks: one guy on watch, four hours on and eight hours off, while the others could be resting. Beaman described how the sailors lived inside the sub. Once approved, the Navy accepted the USS Flasher (SS-249) into its fleet. Beaman moved from New London Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Connecticut down the east coast, and the ship was towed by electric carts through the Panama Canal. Once again underway, the Flasher motored into San Francisco, California, proceeded to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and then Midway Island for supplies and refueling. From Midway the USS Flasher embarked on it first mission, and fired torpedoes for the first time. Beaman said it was an interesting experience, and a little scary. He didn't like the idea of sinking a ship and killing people, but it was war. The Flasher continued on Perth, Australia, which became Beaman's home port.

William Beaman was 18 years old when he participated in his first submarine patrol in the Pacific, and he said he didn't know enough to be afraid. He did "get scared" when the USS Flasher (SS-249) came under fire from depth charges and bombs. Being on patrol was "just like being two months at sea." He described how the ship reacted after a torpedo was fired. The crew could feel a shudder when a "fish" was launched, and stayed too busy during the operation to worry. The explosions were usually too far away to make an impact on the submarine, but each torpedo was monitored to determine if it was running "hot, straight, and normal" on a track pre-determined by a gyro setting. Details of the patrols have faded into Beaman's memory, but he does distinguish between the two men who had command. For his first four patrols, the skipper was a calm, quiet man who proclaimed to be "working for Uncle Sam." The other skipper was a "show-off" that Beaman didn't particularly like. Beaman was a crewmember on all six of the Flasher's missions. He was among the commissioning and decommissioning crews, and emphasized that he was there "through its whole life."

One memorable experience that came to mind for William Beaman was when his submarine, the USS Flasher (SS-249), sank four 10,000 oil tankers in one mission, and the captain remarked that the "whole ocean was on fire." Some of the crew went up top to view the spectacle. Another time, the sub sank a troop ship, and the thought struck Beaman that there might have been a thousand men that died when it went down. Then there was a time when the Flasher sank a coastal freighter with gunfire. Beaman was trained on 20mm guns, but never got up on deck to fire at the enemy, although he sometimes passed ammunition up to the guns. Once at sea, Beaman's watch post was always in the control room, where he was in charge of diving and surfacing the ship. On another mission, the Flasher's crew took prisoners aboard; the Japanese sailors jumped back into the water, but the two prisoners who remained turned out to be Chinese prisoners of the Japanese. The two who stayed wound up working for the cook, until they were turned into the Marines when the ship reached the Philippines. Asked if he remembered the first time the ship experienced depth charges, Beaman said the disturbance "wasn't too much"; he had been indoctrinated to the sensation while in training. He said the worst part was that "things would jump around," and even light bulbs would come unscrewed. He mentioned how the crew used sea temperature layers to "get under a gradient" to evade sonar and described an effect on the propellers called "cavitation." The Flasher could dive no deeper than 300 feet; the Gato-class sub was built for speed and flexibility and had a "thin skin." In all, the Flasher sank 23 ships, accounting for 100,300 tons of wreckage. That was the most tonnage sunk by any ship in World War 2. Although Beaman didn't think it was in really bad shape, the Flasher had sustained 300 to 400 shocks from depth charges and bombs over its six patrols, and was scrapped after the war.

One time that scared William Beaman happened when the USS Flasher (SS-249) was firing electric torpedoes. They were targeting a sea plane tender and, putting a screwdriver to the wall to listen for the blast, Beaman thought he heard the fish return and run down the port side of the submarine. It didn't strike the Flasher, but Beaman knew of ships that were sunk by their own rogue torpedoes. He discussed the trouble they had from enemy aircraft, although their protective camouflage paint job was pretty effective. Still, they were besieged by strafing aircraft that could detect a black shadow in the water. There was an IFF, or "identification, friend or foe", system on board. If the radar showed contact within ten miles, they would dive the boat without questions. To give the men a chance to go topside, they were sometimes assigned "sun lookout" duty, which meant sitting with goggles and staring into the sun, trying to spot enemy planes. Beaman recalled having a rough day on watch topside on the stern when a wave came over the bridge, engulfing the deck, and almost knocking him over the side. He held on with his fingernails to avoid ending up adrift in Japanese waters. He often stood in water up to his knees while greasing topside mechanisms, out of sight of people on the bridge, and worrying they might dive without him. The Flasher was a very fast-diving boat, and the people topside had a very short time frame to get into the hold. On Beaman's first patrol he was sent into a tank to fix a stuck valve. He was small, but could barely fit into the narrow access hatch. Beaman said he could have been "squished in there," and didn't know until years later that the captain said he wouldn't dive until Beaman had finished his work. They were always on the lookout for enemy subs.

Home base for William Beaman and the USS Flasher (SS-249) was Perth, Australia. At the end of a two month mission, the submarine was put in for repairs, and the crew was given a two-week R&R [Annotator's Note: rest and recuperation]. During that time they lived in a Perth hotel, and did anything they wanted, including imbibing the tasty, but potent, Australian beer. Beaman played golf and tennis, watched lawn bowling, went crabbing, and "chased a few girls." He liked the people and the place. After the two weeks, they would go back and rework the list of repairs, then go into training and drills for another couple of weeks, and go back out on patrol. The ship would refuel at Potshot [Annotator's Note: a submarine base near Exmouth set up around the submarine tender USS Pelias (AS–14)], Australia and get into enemy waters from there. There was some rotation on the crew, but there were 20-some guys besides Beaman that stayed with the Flasher through all six patrols. When the war ended, the Flasher was in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, ready for its seventh patrol. On the day the announcement was made, Beaman said "the place went crazy," and he helped to fire colored-smoke rockets into the air. The word came to "knock off" the celebrations, and the sailors stood down. Skeptical that Japan's surrender was genuine, the Navy sent the submarine out for about three days, then called it back to port.

After the war ended, William Beaman was sent back to San Francisco, California on the USS Flasher (SS-249), then traveled with the submarine back through the Panama Canal, arriving at Mobile, Alabama for Navy Day late in October of 1945. Beaman said the crew didn’t know much about marching in a parade; nevertheless, they participated. Afterward, they were shipped to New Orleans, Louisiana for R & R [Annotator’s Note: Rest and Recuperation]. Beaman stayed in New Orleans for quite a while, then went home on leave, and then back to New Orleans on OGU (Outgoing Unit) for the Flasher to be processed for decommissioning at the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Navy Shipyard. They asked Beaman to stay, but he had the points and wanted to get out, and went to Great Lakes, Illinois for discharge. He left Chicago right after New Year’s, 1946, wearing the “ruptured duck” emblem that signified he was still entitled to be in uniform, but was no longer a member of the U.S. Navy. He caught a train home, and that was the end of his first stint in the Navy. In 1950 he rejoined, and was sent to Bethesda, Maryland to join the Severn River Naval Command. But Beaman wanted to go back to submarines—he was still qualified—and once again found himself at the New London Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Connecticut. There he served on the USS Dogfish (SS-350) and the Quillback (SS-424); and helped to commission the Harder (SS-568), the George Washington ((SSBN-598), and the Casimir Pulaski (SSBN-633).

William Beaman thinks young people should be taught the history of World War 2, and believes it is important that there be examples of ships that people can visit so they know what it was like to serve on one. War wasn't "terrible" to Beaman, and he wasn't asked about his experiences, so he's never talked about it much. Being on a submarine firing torpedoes and not having to witness their effects made war less onerous to him than it might have been to a combat soldier. He's always "felt terrible" about killing people, but said, "they were trying to kill us." He asserts that the "average person" doesn't start wars; it's the hierarchy that begin them, and Beaman doesn't think the people who have to go out and do the dirty work can be blamed. When he watches movies about submarines in World War 2, he can't help but criticize them, because he says they portray things that couldn't happen. At the end of the war Beaman was a Motor Machinist 2nd Class [Annotator's Note: Motor Machinist's Mate Second Class], or MoMM2c, and retired as an Engineman Chief Senior [Annotator's Note: Senior Chief Engineman or ENCS]. He never wanted to be off submarines. He was a good, disciplined sailor, and he did his job, and he liked his work. He is a SubVet, and a member of the Holland Club, open only to sailors qualified as submariners for over 50 years.