Would Beatty have returned to command in the Second World War?

If Admiral David Beatty had lived another decade, would he have changed events or been recalled to senior command?

No. There was no plausible political or institutional reason to replace the serving sequence of First Sea Lords with Beatty.

The succession from Madden, Field, and Chatfield through Backhouse, Pound, and Cunningham shows an active senior-command pipeline. Fisher had returned in 1914 under a unique political situation that Fisher himself had helped create. Nothing comparable made an elderly Beatty indispensable on the eve of the Second World War. The Royal Navy had many experienced leaders and was not waiting for one famous admiral to rescue it.