Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr.

Great history of a truly awesome naval hero.

I wish all biographies were as well done.

This biography is reasonably well written and is informative about Admiral Lee’s life, which has not been well documented previously. There is a little too much hagiography here but it’s still entertaining.

"Ching" Lee badly needed a decent biography- well, any biography- to put him in context with other more well known admirals from the Pacific war in WWII. Stillwell's book neatly fills the bill. Lee was a quiet man who shunned publicity, did not make outrageous public statements, and went about the job that needed doing. He was considerably overshadowed by more colorful personalities in WWII. To be fair, he was also a gunfighter, a surface warfare expert, in the days when battleships were rapidly becoming obsolete as the backbone of the fleet. That being said he recognized very early on that greatly increased AAA was going to be a necessity on capital ships and argued for it from the mid-1930s on. He also was very early to recognize the huge step forward that radar controlled gunfire represented. Something he got to prove beyond a doubt at Guadalcanal when his flagship USS Washington demolished the Japanese battleship Kirishima in a night battle. Throughout his career Lee was a forward thinker, constantly looking for ways to improve performance on many fronts in naval warfare. AAA and radar were but two of the areas in which he recommended improvements. Stillwell had access to a great deal of material from both Lee's family and people that had known him since he was a child. So the book is not just a recounting of his naval career, but a portrait of a very human being as well. Always calm no matter what was happening- a good quality when a battleship is shooting at you at what amounts to point blank range. I came away very impressed with Lee the man, as well as Lee the gunfighter.

What more can I say that isn’t written in this book. An enjoyable biography and definitely a must read for anyone interested in steel ship naval history. I hope all commanding officers in the navies of the free world follow this man’s example.