Ships
- USS Ellet (DD-398) Captain from 17 February 1939
Francis James Mee, born on 11 August 1899 on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwestern Minnesota, was a Naval Academy graduate of 1922 and an engineer by training. He commissioned the destroyer Ellet at Kearny, New Jersey, on 17 February 1939 and commanded her for just over two years, until 22 June 1941. In the war he was navigator of the heavy cruiser Portland in the carrier battles of 1942, and later, as a captain, commanded a flotilla of thirty-six LSTs in the Seventh Fleet's amphibious force in the Philippines and Borneo, for which he received the Legion of Merit with the combat "V." He retired in 1952 and was advanced to rear admiral on the basis of that citation.
He was born at White Earth, Minnesota, the son of Charles William Mee and Alice Josephine Spears Mee. A 2023 article published by a transportation-history society says his mother was a member of the White Earth Nation and his father of Scotch-Irish descent, that the family lived on the reservation in his early years and moved to Detroit Lakes, in the west-central part of the state, sometime in the 1910s, and that his mother worked as a translator and goodwill ambassador for fellow tribal members and impressed on him the importance of his Native American heritage. The crew-history page for Little Rock says he attended public schools in Becker County and was part Chippewa. He had at least four siblings: Charley, Caroline, Hortense and Richard.
He was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1918 from Minnesota's Ninth Congressional District.
He entered the Academy at eighteen, in the last months of the First World War. His class of 1922 included, the Little Rock page notes, Hyman Rickover, and he graduated and was commissioned an ensign on 2 June 1922, at twenty-two. What kind of midshipman he was, how he stood in his class and what his classmates wrote about him are not in the sources.
His career then moved toward engineering. He served as junior watch and division officer in the engineering department of the battleship Tennessee from 1922 to 1923, then as assistant engineer officer of the destroyer Thompson until June 1927. He returned to Annapolis for the Postgraduate School's course in mechanical engineering, continued it at Columbia University from February 1928, and took the degree of Master of Science there in 1929. He went out to the Asiatic Station in November 1929 as engineer officer of the destroyer MacLeish, and from June 1931 to June 1932 was engineer officer of the gunboat Luzon, with additional duty as patrol engineer on the staff of the Commander, Yangtze River Patrol. After two years in the industrial department of the Philadelphia Navy Yard he took command of the minesweeper Robin in June 1934, at thirty-four. He received a commendatory letter from the Secretary of the Navy for the engineering performance of the Robin. After that came a tour as senior assistant engineer of the cruiser Indianapolis and, from 1937 to December 1938, duty in the Office of the Inspector of Naval Material in New York, where he was assistant to the Inspector.
In December 1938 he was put in charge of fitting out the new destroyer Ellet at the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Kearny. She was commissioned on 17 February 1939, with him as lieutenant commander in command, at thirty-nine. He had been a lieutenant commander since 23 June 1938.
The ship's history gives the shape of the next two years. In September and October 1939 she was on Neutrality Patrol off the Grand Banks. She then served with Destroyer Division 18 out of Galveston on the West Gulf Patrol. From 26 February 1940 she was based at San Diego and joined Battle Force maneuvers as far as Hawaii. Her home port became Pearl Harbor in the summer of 1941, and Mee's tenure ended on 22 June 1941. The records do not say where in this sequence he was on any given day, nor who relieved him, though they place him with the ship from commissioning through the Pacific transfer.
From July 1941 until November 1942 he was navigator of the heavy cruiser Portland (CA-33). The Navy biography lists the actions in which she took part in that period as the Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal and the Eastern Solomons. His promotion to temporary commander is dated 1 January 1942, and to commander on 30 June 1942. That November he left her. Nothing in the sources describes his own duties or conduct in these battles.
In January 1943 he took the Command Course at the Naval War College, finishing in June, and was promoted to captain on 1 April 1943 at forty-three. He then served as material officer on the staff of Commander, Operational Training Command, Pacific Fleet, a post that made him responsible for providing underway training to the newly commissioned ships built in West Coast yards.
In July 1944 he took command of LST Flotilla 22, thirty-six LSTs, in the Amphibious Force of the Seventh Fleet. His biography lists the landings in which it took part as including Lingayen Gulf and Balikpapan, Borneo. On 2 July 1945, aged forty-five, he had his flotilla at Balikpapan. The Legion of Merit citation, which his biography quotes in part, was "for exceptionally meritorious conduct . . . in action against enemy Japanese forces at Balikpapan, Borneo, on July 2, 1945." It goes on: "Skillfully deploying the LST's under his command, Captain Mee maneuvered in close proximity to mine fields and unloaded assault echelons in proper order and exactly on schedule." The award was submitted by Vice Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, commander of the Seventh Amphibious Force. The rest of the citation is not given on that page.
After the war he went to the Naval District at New Orleans for temporary duty and in January 1946 became commanding officer of the Navy's Mine Countermeasures Station at Panama City, Florida, which he held until March 1947. On 10 March 1947 he took command of the light cruiser Little Rock (CL-92), which he held until 4 January 1948. From March 1948 to May or June 1949 he was Commander, Fleet Training Group and Underway Training Unit, Western Pacific, responsible for underway training and training facilities in the Pacific west of Hawaii. His last assignment was in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington as Director of Administrative Inspections, from June 1949 until he retired on 30 June 1952, at fifty-two, "involuntarily," as the biography says, under the statutory retirement law. He was advanced to rear admiral on the basis of the combat citation, and the page says he was "possibly the first American Indian to attain Flag rank."
His decorations, as listed, included the Legion of Merit with combat "V," the World War I Victory Medal, the Yangtze Service Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one silver star and two bronze stars for seven engagements, the World War II Victory Medal and the Philippine Liberation Ribbon with one star.
According to the 2023 article he spent a large part of his time after leaving the Navy teaching at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was married to Sue Katheryn Kelly of Vicksburg, Mississippi, who was born on 3 October 1902 and died on 12 February 1996; they had no children, and according to the Little Rock page she taught at Carr Central High School and All Saints School in Vicksburg and the couple helped others in the town. He died on 29 December 1990, aged ninety-one. He and his wife are buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg.