Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr. Paul Stillwell. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2021.
Paul Stillwell illustrates in the Acknowledgement to his book that his biography of Vice Admiral Willis Lee took decades and entailed very carefully researching the Admiral’s life. This investigation involved contact with numerous surviving relatives who held letters and other primary source materials about Lee. It also required interviews of surviving friends, neighbors, and subordinates. Taking over forty years to complete as Stillwell worked on other projects for the United States Naval Institute, the final result was well worth the wait since it not only demonstrates Lee’s importance to American naval professionalism in his own day, but also his legacy of leadership for today’s Navy. The particular goal for Stillwell was to revive the memory of Lee to illustrate these leadership traits. Whether Stillwell succeeds in bringing Lee to our generation of sailors in the United States Navy—much less general American society—remains to be seen, but the biography is top notch.
Stillwell especially succeeds in demonstrating how Lee’s character traits turned into leadership skills later in life. Stillwell illustrates not only Lee’s early and continuing proficiency with firearms but Lee’s undisciplined nature during his pre-Naval Academy days. One might not expect for Lee to have been a prankster in his youth. The latter trait, however, was probably the source of Lee’s laid-back leadership style that put subordinates at ease and made him such an effective mentor.
What also stands out in this regard is Lee’s ability to buck systems. His slovenly appearance in uniform, for instance, was compensated for by his brilliance. Lee’s ability to succeed in spite of problems is also shown in Stillwell’s analysis of Lee’s Olympic-quality marksmanship in spite of poor eyesight from an adolescent accident. Further, Lee’s skill with firearms is matched with his coolness under fire at places such as Veracruz in 1914 and Guadalcanal in 1942. He was also cool, calm, and collected when he had to weather Navy bureaucracy, which seemed to continually attempt to eject him from the Navy in his early commissioned years because of his uncorrected vision. Even though his corrected vision was 20/20, he had to sweat out making lieutenant (junior grade) and then full lieutenant.
The chapters on World War One and the interwar period illustrate a number of other aspects of Lee’s life as well as those of the Navy itself. First is Lee’s personality, which is described in primary sources—Navy materials and recollections by classmates decades later—as down-to-earth, easygoing, professional, and modest. Next is his increasing capability with ordnance and shooting, activities that kept him away from surface ships for five years, an absence that did not harm his career. In fact, his temporary wartime promotion to lieutenant commander quickly became permanent, which was rare for the U.S. military in the years after World War One. Stillwell also demonstrates that during the war and in the 1920s Lee continued to develop as a commander, ship handler, and especially gunnery and ordnance specialist. In addition, Stillwell includes enough material about Lee’s wife Mabelle to make this a full biography about Lee rather than just a career tale.
Stillwell again demonstrates Lee’s developing leadership style as Lee moved through his duties as a full commander, particularly how different he was from average officers during the interwar period and how the interwar years did not blunt the characteristics of a cutting-edge naval officer. Specifically, Stillwell thinks Lee’s command qualities stemmed from his personality and his bottom-up command style. He was so recognized by his superiors for his qualities that even though he never served as a battleship gunnery officer, he continued to be seen as one of the top ordnance specialists in the Navy. He was clearly more focused on his own development and that of other personnel than carrying out the mundane tasks that were a staple of American naval life at the time.
As another example of Lee’s recognized strengths, Stillwell illustrates how unusual Lee was in that his only ship command as a captain was a light cruiser. Lee’s exceptional qualities come through here and not only as a ship captain but as Assistant Director and then Director of the Fleet Training Division in the late 1930s and early 1940s as the U.S. was preparing for war. In addition, Stillwell points out that Lee was promoted to flag rank in early 1942 without the precious battleship command. This career progression also suggests the degree to which the supposedly “dinosaur-like” naval bureaucracy could demonstrate flexibility when it came to personnel assignments when extraordinary capabilities like Lee’s were necessary and recognized. Using accounts of the Admiral left by Lee’s staff members, Stillwell also portrays Lee’s skills as a battleship division commander as well as Lee’s workaholic habits. Stillwell additionally demonstrates how this latter quality took a toll on his wife.
Interestingly, there is not a great deal that is new when we get to the Pacific War itself, not because of Stillwell’s coverage, but because so much about these engagements has been covered over the last several decades. The material on the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal would have been strengthened had Stillwell included a more thorough analysis of Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan’s plan of engaging the Japanese battleships. Nevertheless, what does come out quite clearly again as Lee becomes a type commander (Commander, Battleships, Pacific Fleet (COMBATPAC)) is his workaholic lifestyle that probably had a lot to do with his early death in 1945.
The new material for this reviewer concerning the Battle of the Philippine Sea was the controversy over Lee’s decision not to seek a night surface engagement. I had no idea that Lee’s competence was so called into question at the time or since. Stillwell does not give his opinion, which would have been interesting given how familiar he is with Lee, but this reviewer assumes that he did not want to try to sway readers one way or the other. When it came to the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the material on the battle and the controversy over Admiral William Halsey’s conduct as Commander of the Third Fleet is fine, but what is more fascinating from a biographical perspective is that Lee’s capabilities were clearly recognized by Halsey when he made Lee the Assistant Commander of the Third Fleet in case of Halsey’s incapacitation. What is also new here is that Lee was kept in the Pacific for so long because the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations thought him the best qualified officer to deal with Japanese heavy surface forces. His recall to the Navy Department in the summer of 1945 is also notable given that the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations also thought him the best qualified to solve the problem of defending surface ships from kamikazes.
Admiral Halsey confers with Vice Admiral John S. McCain Sr. on board Halsey's flagship, USS New Jersey, in December 1944. (Wikimedia)
Stillwell’s analysis of Lee being assigned by Commodore Arleigh Burke as Commander of the Atlantic Fleet’s Composite Task Force in the summer of 1945 because of his analytical capabilities was in contrast to how Lee felt in the time period running up to Japan’s announcement of surrender and his sudden death. Again, Lee’s analytical as well as leadership traits are demonstrated by Stillwell in this portion of the book. Stillwell also shows the vacuum for both Lee and the Navy in the impending wake of the war. Stillwell additionally illustrates Lee’s legacy to the Navy in terms of the officers that he mentored, his contributions to the Navy’s surface gunnery capabilities, and his speculation about what Lee might have accomplished with postwar guided missile research. Stillwell further demonstrated how the stress of the war probably contributed to Lee’s early death and how Lee’s death probably contributed to his wife’s early demise. Stillwell ends with coverage of the destroyer that was named for Lee but also convincingly argues that the ultimate legacy for Lee was being forgotten because of his quiet demeanor and his unwillingness to promote himself. That last point is woven throughout the biography and Stillwell does a masterful job of demonstrating how Lee’s modest personality translated into the Admiral being such an effective leader. In this reviewer’s opinion, this final point is what makes the biography even more valuable and the long wait so well worth it.
Hal Friedman is Chair and Professor of History at Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Michigan, and is the author of several books on U.S. national security policy toward the Pacific Basin immediately after World War II.
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Header Image: USS Pennsylvania leading USS Colorado and the cruisers USS Louisville, USS Portland, and USS Columbia into Lingayen Gulf, Philippines, in January 1945. (Wikimedia)