Ships
- HMS Prince of Wales (53) Captain from 15 February 1941 · In command when she was lost, 10 December 1941
John Catterall Leach was born on 1 September 1894 at Clevedon in Somerset, the son of Charles Rothwell Leach, a solicitor. Known as Jack, he entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in May 1907. On 15 January 1912 he joined the fleet as a midshipman in the battleship Temeraire, and he was still in her when the First World War began.
He passed the rest of the war in the battleship Erin. He was promoted sub-lieutenant on 30 December 1914 and lieutenant on 15 December 1915. At the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916 he had charge of a turret, and the Admiralty afterwards gave him six months' extra seniority for the way he carried out that duty. On 9 September 1916 he married Evelyn Lee. They had four sons. The third, Henry, became Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Leach and was First Sea Lord at the time of the Falklands conflict.
Leach's specialty was gunnery. Promoted lieutenant-commander on 15 December 1923, he served as fleet gunnery officer in the cruiser Calcutta. In 1927 he was in the battlecruiser Renown for the royal tour of Australasia, and for that service he was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order. He became a commander on 31 December 1928 and a captain on 31 December 1933. From 1936 to 1938 he commanded the cruiser Cumberland.
On 15 February 1941 Leach was appointed captain of the new battleship Prince of Wales. She was still being finished, and he took her through trials and working-up as she joined the Home Fleet. He still had her on 10 December 1941.
Her first action came on 24 May 1941 in the Denmark Strait. In company with the battlecruiser Hood, Prince of Wales met the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. Hood blew up early in the fight. Prince of Wales was hit several times, and trouble in her new gun mountings left Leach unable to fight the ship at full effectiveness, so he broke off. Shells from his ship had already struck Bismarck and started a fuel leak that helped turn the German battleship toward occupied France. A proposal was made to court-martial Leach for leaving the action. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order instead.
In August 1941 Prince of Wales carried Winston Churchill to Placentia Bay in Newfoundland for his meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Leach commanded her on that voyage. The talks produced the Atlantic Charter.
That autumn Prince of Wales was sent to Singapore and became the flagship of Force Z, with the battlecruiser Repulse in company. On the morning of 10 December 1941 the flag officer was Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, and his flag flew in Prince of Wales. Phillips was not her captain. The squadron had put to sea against Japanese invasion shipping and was off Kuantan after a report of landings there. Shore-based Japanese naval aircraft sank Prince of Wales in the South China Sea. The sinking is not credited to one plane. Leach was lost with her. He was forty-seven.