Theodore Edson Chandler (December 26, 1894 – January 7, 1945) was a Rear admiral of the United States Navy during World War II, who commanded battleship and cruiser divisions in both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. He was killed in action when a Japanese kamikaze aircraft struck his flagship on January 6, 1945, in Lingayen Gulf, Philippine Islands. He died the next day, January 7, 1945, from severely scorched lungs. He was one of five flag officers of the U.S. Navy to die in World War II after Isaac C. Kidd, Norman Scott, Daniel J. Callaghan, and Henry M. Mullinnix. Early life and career Theodore Edson Chandler was born at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1894, on the day after Christmas, the son of Rear Admiral Lloyd Horwitz Chandler, USN, and Mrs. Agatha Edson Chandler. He was the grandson of William E. Chandler (1835–1917), who served as Secretary of the Navy during the Chester A. Arthur administration and a U.S. Senator from New Hampshire, and Lucy Lambert Hale (1841–1915). He attended Manlius School for Boys and Swavely's Army and Navy Preparatory School before his appointment to the United States Naval Academy for the Second District of New Hampshire in 1911. As a Midshipman he won letters in basketball and lacrosse. He graduated and was commissioned an Ensign on 4 June 1915. The new officer received orders to report for duty in the battleship . Chandler next served briefly on board the battleship before beginning training in the use of torpedoes at the end of April 1917, on board . On August 2, he completed that assignment and four days later joined the precommissioning complement of the destroyer , then being fitted out at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. World War I and interwar years In May 1918, Lieutenant junior grade Chandler sailed in Conner to Brest, France, his destroyer's base during the last six months of World War I. After the Armistice, his service in European waters included a brief term as the temporary commanding officer of Conner. Chandler returned home in April 1919. On April 28, 1919, he married Beatrice Bowen Fairfax in Washington, D.C. In May, 1919, he reported to the shipyard of the William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilding Co. to help outfit the destroyer , named in honor of his late grandfather, former Secretary of the Navy William E. Chandler. After her commissioning in September, he served in that ship