Ships
- USS Enterprise (CV-6) Captain from 25 September 1945 · Relieved on 20 February 1946
William Lehigh Rees was born on 18 November 1900 in Louisville, Kentucky. He went to sea as a midshipman in World War I aboard the battleship Ohio in the Atlantic. He graduated from the Naval Academy on 3 June 1920 with the first half of the Class of 1921. In the 1920s he served in destroyers and earned a master's degree in metallurgical engineering from Columbia University. He trained at Pensacola from 1928 to 1930 and was designated a naval aviator on 10 October 1930.
He served at Pearl Harbor, in the light cruiser Raleigh and in the Navy Department, then commanded Fighting Squadron 5 aboard Yorktown. From 1940 to June 1941 he led Yorktown's air group. As a commander he next went to London as an assistant naval attaché and special observer at the U.S. Embassy. After Pearl Harbor he served in the Bureau of Aeronautics until 1943. Then, as a captain, he fitted out the escort carrier Mission Bay at Vancouver, Washington, and took her into the North Atlantic on convoy and antisubmarine duty. In June 1944 he was promoted to rear admiral and joined the headquarters of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, where he stayed through the end of the war.
A month after the war ended he took command of Enterprise. He brought "The Big E" home from the Pacific and commanded her for a short time while she carried troops home from Europe.
After the war he attended the National War College, served a second tour as naval attaché in London, commanded a carrier division, and from 1950 to 1953 led the naval group of the Joint Military Assistance Mission to Turkey. He was Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Air from 1953 to 1956. From 1956 until he retired in 1960, he was a vice admiral commanding the Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, and his work there earned him the Distinguished Service Medal. He lived in Washington from 1960 and died of a heart attack at George Washington University Hospital on 9 November 1989, at 88. He left no immediate survivors.