Willis Augustus "Ching" Lee Jr. (May 11, 1888 – August 25, 1945) was a vice admiral of the United States Navy during World War II. Lee commanded the American ships during the second night of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 14–15, 1942) and turned back a Japanese invasion force headed for the island. The victory ended Japanese attempts to reinforce their troops on Guadalcanal, and thus marked a turning point in both the Guadalcanal Campaign and the Pacific War.
Lee was also a skilled sport shooter, and won seven medals in the 1920 Olympics shooting events, including five gold medals, tied with teammate Lloyd Spooner for the most anyone had ever received at a single Olympic Games. Their record stood for 60 years. He was the most successful athlete at the 1920 Olympics.[1]
Early life
The son of Judge Willis Augustus Lee and Susan Arnold, he was known as "Mose" Lee to family and friends.[2][3]
Following graduation, Lee joined the academy's rifle team three times. First, during his final summer training stint on the USS Nevada he was called back to Annapolis to participate on the rifle team.[6] He was assigned to the battleshipIdaho from October 1908 to May 1909, before returning to the naval academy and rejoining the rifle team. From November 1909 until May 1910, Lee served aboard the protected cruiserNew Orleans, and then transferred to the gunboatHelena. Upon being detached back to the United States, Lee re-joined the academy shooting team a third time. In July 1913, Lee re-joined Idaho, and in April 1914 he transferred to the battleship New Hampshire to participate in the occupation of Veracruz.[7]
Lee and Spooner ended the 1920 Olympics with 7 medals each, the most anyone had ever received in a single year's games. Boris Shakhlin was the next person to reach 7, in 1960. It would not be until Alexander Dityatin in the 1980 games that anyone would beat the record.
During the 1930s and early 1940s, Lee was several times assigned to the Fleet Training Division, commanded the light cruiserConcord, and served on the staff of Commander, Cruisers, Battle Force. In early 1942, following his promotion to the rank of rear admiral, Lee became Assistant Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of U.S. Fleet.[9]
World War II
Lee's specialty in life was gunnery. At the age of 19 in 1907 "he became the only American to win both the US National High Power Rifle and Pistol championships in the same year." In 1914 during the Veracruz campaign in Mexico he drew the fire of three enemy snipers, thereby exposing their positions and then shot them at long range.[4] He understood the powerful guns of a battleship as an extension of the law of ballistics and adapted his expertise to the new age of technology.[10] When Admiral Lee engaged the Japanese Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondō's battleship Kirishima on the evening of 14 November 1942 in the waters off Guadalcanal, he became naval history's first battleship commander to conduct a "gunfight" primarily by radarremote control.[11]
Naval Battle of Guadalcanal
Bull Halsey presents Lee with the Navy Cross for his actions during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, circa January 1943
In August 1942, Rear Admiral Lee was sent to the Pacific to command Battleship Division Six, consisting of the battleships Washington and South Dakota.
Flying his flag in Washington, Lee engaged an Imperial Japanese Navysurface fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Kondō during the second night of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on the night of 14–15 November 1942. While riding in the battleship Washington, which served as his flagship during this sea fight, Lee's battleship decisively shelled the battleship Kirishima into a wreck, resulting in her scuttling shortly afterwards. With 300 Imperial sailors still entombed within her hull, she slid into Ironbottom Sound,[12] leaving Admiral Lee's flagship Washington the only American battleship during World War II to sink an enemy battleship in a "one on one" gunfight.[13]
Lee, who "knew more about radar than the radar operators",[14] used the SG radar installed aboard Washington to skillfully maneuver his ships during the night.
To Willis Lee went many accolades. "Audacious planning and execution" marked his operations, commented Halsey... Unlike Callaghan, Lee never allowed the action to degenerate into a nautical brawl, because he formulated a workable plan and adhered to it, even after every ship in his task force except Washington was sunk or forced to retire. Lee was never more incisive than in his own evaluation of his success: "We realized then and it should not be forgotten now, that our entire superiority was due almost entirely to our possession of radar. Certainly we have no edge on the Japs in experience, skill, training, or performance of personnel."
Willis Lee Jr. was a distant relative of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the third Attorney General of the United States, Charles Lee.[18] He married Mabelle Allen Elspeth (1894–1949) on July 14, 1919. They had no children.
Willis' father, Judge Willis Augustus Lee Sr., was one of fourteen children of Nathaniel Wiley Lee (aka Nat Lee, founder of Natlee) and Frances Abbott, of Owen County, Kentucky. While in the Pacific theater, Lee unofficially adopted two Korean children in Vietnam after the children's family requested that Lee take the children to the United States.[19]
His great-grandparents were early Kentucky settlers, Joseph R. Lee and Mary Wiley.[20] His grandfather Nathaniel W. Lee operated a distillery at his namesake village of Natlee. In 1893, Nat Lee's sour mash whiskey was taken to the Chicago World's Fair where it won the Gold Medal over 5000 other entries.[21]
^Lucky Bag. Nimitz Library U. S. Naval Academy. First Class, United States Naval Academy. 1908.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^Stillwell, Paul (2021). Battleship commander: the life of vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN978-1-68247-594-2.
Stillwell, Paul (2021). Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr (Hardcover). Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN9781682475935. See online book review
