Ships
- USS South Dakota (BB-57) Captain from 1 February 1943 · Relieved on 20 September 1943
Lynde Dupuy McCormick was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on 12 August 1895. His father, a naval surgeon, later became a rear admiral. McCormick attended St. John's Preparatory School and College in Annapolis, entered the Naval Academy in 1911, and graduated with distinction on 4 June 1915. He was commissioned an ensign that month.
His first duty was in the battleship Wyoming. During the First World War she served with the British Grand Fleet, and McCormick was aboard when the German High Seas Fleet surrendered. He afterward served in South Carolina and the destroyer Buchanan. His own commands at sea included the destroyer Kennedy and the submarines R-10 and V-2. Between sea tours he returned to the Naval Academy to teach. He was promoted to captain on 1 July 1941.
In February 1941 he joined the Pacific Fleet staff as assistant war plans officer under Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. He was in that assignment when Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz kept the staff, and in April 1942 McCormick became Nimitz's war plans officer. He held the post through the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway and through the Guadalcanal campaign, and he left the staff in January 1943.
On the night of 14-15 November 1942, Thomas L. Gatch commanded South Dakota in the night battle off Guadalcanal. McCormick was not in command. Washington sank the Japanese battleship Kirishima. South Dakota did not. McCormick became captain of South Dakota on 1 February 1943 and was relieved on 20 September 1943. In those months the battleship operated off the Atlantic coast and then with the British Home Fleet.
In October 1943 he joined the staff of Admiral Ernest J. King as assistant chief of naval operations for logistic plans. He also chaired the Joint Logistics Committee and was the chief adviser on logistics to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that capacity he accompanied King to the second Quebec Conference and to the Yalta Conference. He stayed in the logistics post until March 1945.
That spring he commanded Battleship Division 3 in the Okinawa campaign, where the division furnished gunfire support. The Legion of Merit, with two gold stars in lieu of further awards, recognized his war plans work on the Pacific Fleet staff, his logistics planning in Washington, and his service with the battleship division off Okinawa.
In the postwar years he was deputy commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet and later commanded the Twelfth Naval District. In February 1950 he became Vice Chief of Naval Operations. When Admiral Forrest Sherman died, McCormick served briefly as acting Chief of Naval Operations. In 1951 he took command of the Atlantic Fleet as an admiral. On 10 April 1952 he became the first Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic under NATO. His last post was president of the Naval War College, from 1954 until his death at Newport, Rhode Island, on 16 August 1956. He was buried in the Naval Academy cemetery.