Ships
- USS Lewis Hancock (DD-675) Captain, 1 November 1945 – 8 December 1945
Lieutenant Louis L. Lesesne commanded the United States Navy destroyer Lewis Hancock from 1 November 1945 to 8 December 1945. He held the rank of lieutenant. Those weeks came after the fighting in the Pacific had ended, while the ship lay on the California coast and her first commission was running out.
Lewis Hancock was a Fletcher-class destroyer built by the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company at Kearny, New Jersey. Her keel was laid on 31 March 1943, she was launched on 1 August 1943, and she was commissioned on 29 September 1943 with Charles Huntington Lyman in command. The name honored Lewis Hancock, Jr., a 1910 graduate of the Naval Academy who had commanded submarines in the First World War and was killed on 3 September 1925 when the airship Shenandoah broke up over Ohio. His widow, Lieutenant Joy Hancock, sponsored the ship at the launching.
After shakedown, Lewis Hancock left the Atlantic late in 1943 and joined the fast carrier forces in the Pacific. Through 1944 and the first half of 1945 she screened carriers in the Marshall Islands, the Marianas, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the campaign in the Philippines, strikes toward the Japanese home islands, and the fight for Okinawa. William Marvin Searles commanded her from 14 March 1944 to 15 May 1945. Richard Edward Babb relieved Searles and kept the ship through the summer and into the autumn. In July 1945 Lewis Hancock entered a West Coast yard for overhaul and was still there when Japan surrendered.
The destroyer reached San Diego on 7 September 1945. John B. Wilkes had command from 25 October until 1 November, when Lesesne relieved him. On 8 December Lesesne turned Lewis Hancock over to Floyd Charles Lawrence. Lawrence stayed aboard until the ship was decommissioned on 10 January 1946. She remained in reserve until May 1951, when the Korean War brought her back into commission.