Ships
- USS Alden (DD-211) Captain, 9 July 1940 to 15 March 1942 · In command at the Battle of the Java Sea, 27 February 1942. She was not sunk.
Lewis Elliott Coley was born in Alexander City, Alabama, on 2 October 1899. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1924 and served through the peacetime years in the surface navy. On 1 July 1939 he was promoted to lieutenant commander.
He became captain of the destroyer Alden on 9 July 1940. She was an old flush-deck ship of the Asiatic Fleet. Coley kept her through the last year of peace and the opening of the Pacific war, as that fleet fell back from the Philippines toward the Netherlands East Indies. His command ran to 15 March 1942.
On 27 February 1942 he had Alden in the Battle of the Java Sea. The American destroyers were on the disengaged side of the Allied cruiser column. After the British cruiser Exeter was damaged, they made smoke for her and then fired their torpedoes. Coley wrote that he believed the attack saved Exeter at that time. Exeter was not sunk in that phase. De Ruyter and Java were sunk later that night. That loss is not credited to Alden. Alden was not sunk. She anchored at Surabaya at 2:10 a.m. the next morning.
That night the four destroyers of Division 58 ran Bali Strait and met Hatsuharu, Nenohi, Wakaba, and Hatsushimo. A short gun duel followed. The Americans laid smoke and got through. None of the four was hit. They reached Fremantle on 4 March. On 15 March Jacob Elliott Cooper relieved Coley in command of Alden.
Coley received the Navy Cross for his conduct as commanding officer of Alden in the torpedo attack of 27 February 1942. He became a temporary commander on 17 July 1942 and a temporary captain on 1 June 1943. He retired in 1954 as a rear admiral and died in Oklahoma City on 14 August 1979.