Background
Lynde Dupuy McCormick was born on August 12, 1895, in Annapolis, Maryland. He was the son of Lieutenant (later Rear Admiral) Albert Montgomery Dupuy McCormick of the Navy Medical Corps, and Edith Lynde Abbot.
Lynde Dupuy McCormick was born on August 12, 1895, in Annapolis, Maryland. He was the son of Lieutenant (later Rear Admiral) Albert Montgomery Dupuy McCormick of the Navy Medical Corps, and Edith Lynde Abbot.
McCormick studied at St. John's College, Annapolis, for two years before accepting an appointment by President William Howard Taft to the United States Naval Academy in 1911. He graduated, second in his class, in 1915.
Assigned to the battleship Wyoming, which operated with the British Grand Fleet, McCormick witnessed the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet in 1918. He commanded the destroyer Kennedy for a few months in 1921 before returning to the Naval Academy as an instructor. Following a course of instruction at the Submarine School in New London, Connecticut, in 1923, McCormick served in submarines. He commanded the R-10 at Pearl Harbor from 1924 to 1926, and the Bass from 1928 to 1931. Following these assignments, he had tours of sea and shore duty until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. At that time McCormick was assistant war plans officer on the staff of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. After Chester W. Nimitz succeeded Kimmel, he appointed McCormick, then a captain, as his war plans officer. McCormick served in this billet in 1942, during the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, and the Guadalcanal campaign, for which service he was awarded the Legion of Merit. As commanding officer of the battleship South Dakota in 1943, he saw duty in the Atlantic, in northern European waters with the British Home Fleet, and in the South Pacific. McCormick was promoted to rear admiral in 1943.
After his extensive war experience on a major staff and in command, Admiral Ernest J. King, the chief of naval operations, brought McCormick to Washington as his assistant for logistics plans. In this capacity McCormick became chairman of the Joint Logistics Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and accompanied King to the Quebec Conference in 1944 and to Yalta in 1945. Later in 1945, as commander of Battleship Division 3, McCormick was a task group commander during the battle for Okinawa. Immediately after the war McCormick served as chief of staff to the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet and, later, he commanded battleships and cruisers of the Atlantic Fleet. Following this command he reverted to his permanent rank of rear admiral when he became commandant of the 12th Naval District, with headquarters in San Francisco. Late in 1949 President Harry S. Truman appointed him vice chief of naval operations, the second-ranking position in the navy. He assumed his new duties in April 1950 as a vice admiral and was promoted to admiral in December of that year. Upon the death of the chief of naval operations, Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, on July 22, 1951, McCormick became acting chief of naval operations. The following month the president appointed him commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet. In January 1952, McCormick assumed additional duties as the first supreme allied commander, Atlantic, a major command in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that covers the area from the Arctic to the Tropic of Cancer and from North America to the coasts of Africa and Europe. An operational rather than administrative command, it is charged with the task of keeping the sea-lanes open between the Western Hemisphere and Europe in the event of war. McCormick served in this capacity until 1954, when he was appointed president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He died in Newport.
McCormick was the namesake of the guided-missile destroyer Lynde McCormick.
On October 2, 1920, McCormick married Lillian Addison Sprigg Graham. They had two children, and McCormick subsequently adopted her son by her first husband.
