Ships
- USS Lang (DD-399) Captain from 30 March 1939
Felix L. Johnson was born on 15 July 1897. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1919 and went to sea in the battleship Delaware while American forces were still occupying Haiti. In 1923 he joined the minesweeper Penguin for the Yangtze Patrol, the shallow-draft force that watched American interests along the river. Ordered to the Asiatic Station in 1928, he served on the way out as navigator of the schooner yacht Atlantic in the ocean race from New York to Santander. In 1929 he was aide and flag lieutenant to the commander in chief of the Asiatic Fleet. Duty with the Chief of Naval Operations followed, and in 1936 he joined the Naval Mission to Brazil.
On 30 March 1939, still a lieutenant commander, he became captain of the new destroyer Lang (DD-399). Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock had built her at Kearny, New Jersey. She was named for John Lang, the seaman who was first aboard the British ship Frolic when the sloop Wasp took her in October 1812. Johnson was her commanding officer from the day she was commissioned. He was promoted to commander on 1 July 1939 and kept the ship.
Her first cruise was still a peacetime one. On 12 August 1939 Lang left New York to guard President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the passage toward Campobello, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia. On 24 August the president came aboard at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, for the short run to Fort Hancock. In November the destroyer shifted from Newport, Rhode Island, to Galveston for the Gulf Patrol. Johnson also took her to survey the Cocos Islands after the president asked for the work. In the spring of 1940 Lang moved to the Pacific, reaching San Diego on 18 March and Pearl Harbor on 2 April. Through the rest of his tour she trained and exercised between Hawaii and the West Coast. He left her on 10 October 1940.
In the Second World War he commanded the transport President Adams in the South Pacific and put troops ashore at Cape Torokina on Bougainville and at other landings in the Solomons. He then served as assistant chief of staff and liaison officer with the South Pacific command, duty for which he received the Legion of Merit. He held the temporary rank of captain from 18 June 1942.
On 9 September 1944 he took command of the light cruiser Springfield. Early in 1945 the cruiser helped escort President Roosevelt on the voyage tied to the Yalta conference, then joined the Fifth Fleet for the last stretch of the Pacific campaign. He left Springfield on 15 May 1945.
After Japan surrendered he commanded the destroyer force of the Atlantic Fleet. He finished his career as Director of Naval Intelligence and retired in 1952 as a vice admiral. He lived in Leonardtown, Maryland, and died in 1981.