Donald Croom Beatty (April 11, 1900 – July 12, 1980) was an American aviator, explorer, and inventor. Beatty was the son of Isaac Beatty, Jr and Hughie Duffee Beatty of Birmingham, Alabama (United States). He began his flying career as a teenager by soloing a small plane he constructed himself with a motorcycle engine at his grandfather's farm near Tarrant on June 16, 1916. The flight ended with a crash landing. Not long afterward he designed and constructed a hand-powered submarine which he sank in Homewood's Edgewood Lake.