Ships
- USS Thatcher (DD-514) Captain, 10 February 1943 – 4 August 1944
Leland Ralph Lampman was born in Rockford, Illinois, on 25 February 1905. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1927. He was promoted to lieutenant on 30 June 1936 and to lieutenant commander on 1 July 1941.
On 15 June 1941, while still a lieutenant, he took command of the destroyer Ellis (DD-154), a ship of World War I vintage then serving in the Atlantic. He remained her commanding officer through the first year of American participation in the war and left her on 12 January 1943. In that time the destroyer’s work was escort duty on the Atlantic convoy routes.
His next ship was new. The Fletcher-class destroyer Thatcher (DD-514), built at Bath Iron Works in Maine, was commissioned on 10 February 1943 with Lampman as her first commanding officer. He held the temporary rank of commander, dated from the previous September, while his permanent grade was lieutenant commander. After shakedown training in Casco Bay, Thatcher sailed from New York on 29 April with convoy UGF-8 for Casablanca and returned with convoy GUF-8 on 31 May. She departed the east coast on 11 June, joined the Pacific Fleet on 19 June, called at Mare Island for changes to her armament, and reached Pearl Harbor on 31 July.
On 22 August Thatcher joined the fast carrier group of Rear Admiral Charles A. Pownall. The carriers struck Marcus Island on 31 August, and the force was back at Pearl Harbor on 7 September. Lampman then took the destroyer south for the landings on Bougainville. In the early hours of 2 November 1943, off Empress Augusta Bay, American cruisers and destroyers met a Japanese squadron that had sortied against the beachhead. Lampman took Thatcher into the night action. In the turns and smoke she collided with the destroyer Spence, and the damage was serious enough to send her back to the United States for repairs and overhaul. The Japanese attack failed to break the landing. Their light cruiser Sendai and destroyer Hatsukaze were sunk in the battle. For his conduct that night Lampman received the Navy Cross.
Thatcher returned to the combat zone in March 1944. Lampman stayed in command through the early summer and turned the ship over on 4 August 1944. William Arthur Cockell relieved him that day. Charles Richardson Chandler commanded Thatcher from April 1945 and was her captain when a kamikaze badly damaged her off Okinawa on 20 May 1945, killing fourteen of her crew.
Lampman was advanced to the temporary rank of captain on 20 March 1945. He received the Legion of Merit with Combat V for his service in the war. He remained in the Navy after the fighting ended and retired as a rear admiral. He died on 2 October 1971, at the age of sixty-six, and was buried in Circle Hill Cemetery.