Sunrise on 13 December 1941 revealed Oahu’s familiar profile to Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, the commander of Cruiser Division Six in the U.S. Pacific Fleet. His flagship, heavy cruiser Astoria, prepared to enter the cozy confines of Pearl Harbor. After eighteen months’ duty in the Hawaiian Islands, going back into base should have been routine, but not on that occasion. Six days before, Japanese aircraft carriers surprised the fleet at Pearl Harbor and opened the Pacific portion of World War II. The task force in which Fletcher served was near Midway and pursued the raiders but fortunately—as it turned out—never caught up with them. Now he was returning for a new assignment. Radio dispatches from Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet (Cincpac), painted a grim picture. Nothing, though, prepared Fletcher for what he saw. First there was a crashed U.S. carrier plane perched in the shallow water, then to starboard gutted Hickam airfield. Aground after her valiant sortie was the battleship Nevada, “Her nose in the beach and her bow partly submerged, her deck plates all hogged up from bomb hits.” Beyond, in Battleship Row, the sunken California rested in the mud, as did the West Virginia; the Oklahoma presented just her “red bottom and one bronze propeller,” and the Arizona had blown apart. Only the hurt Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee remained seaworthy. Hundreds of carrier-based torpedo planes, dive bombers, level bombers, and strafing fighters sank or damaged eighteen ships and ravaged Oahu’s airfields of 188 planes. Nearly twenty-four hundred Americans died, but so far as anyone knew, the victory cost Japan a few midget submarines and an insignificant number of aircraft.1
The “horrible sight” of the once magnificent battle line reduced to an impotent shambles shook Fletcher to the core. Like Kimmel and nearly all the senior officers, he was a “black shoe,” a nickname derived from the color of the footgear most naval officers wore. Black shoes were surface warriors, to whom big-gunned and heavily armored battleships, the “major fighting power of the U.S. Fleet,” represented true naval might. Aircraft carriers—the pride of the “brown shoe” naval aviators—they considered secondary to battleships in the navy’s prime mission of destroying the enemy battle fleet. Conceding carriers were valuable for reconnaissance, air cover, attacking weakly protected forces, and raiding ground targets, black shoes avowed only battleships could defeat other battleships and win supremacy on the seas. The unfolding Pacific War stood the black-shoe world on its head. Not only did Japan, a despised adversary, demolish the battle line, but also they accomplished that astounding feat by massing carriers to project vast firepower. The successful prosecution of the war now required air supremacy, both from the seagoing airfields and shore bases. Nailing that last point was the almost equally shocking destruction, on 10 December, of the modern British battleship Prince of Wales and old battle cruiser Repulse by land-based medium bombers. Not caught in harbor like the Italian battleships in 1940 at Taranto and the U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor, they succumbed at sea to a blizzard of aerial torpedoes and heavy bombs.2
Alone among his peers, Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku, commander of the Combined Fleet, recognized carrier air power to be the trump card in modern naval warfare. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) already possessed the strongest such capacity in the world. He resolved to use carriers to open the war in a daring stab to the heart of U.S. naval strength at remote Pearl Harbor. Sinking the Pacific Fleet’s battleships and carriers would cover the seizure of the Philippines and Southeast Asia and give Japan vital time to consolidate its defense of newly won gains. To attack Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto created an immensely powerful striking force of no fewer than six aircraft carriers, wielding more than four hundred planes. Vice Adm. Nagumo Chūichi’s Kidō Butai (literally “mobile force,” but the best term in English is “striking force”) comprised carriers Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, and Zuikaku, two fast battleships, two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, sixteen destroyers, three submarines, and seven oilers. Seventeen other subs (including five equipped with midget subs) would rampage Hawaiian waters. On 26 November the Kidō Butai secretly sortied from northern Japan to venture three thousand miles across the barren, stormy North Pacific bound for a launch point 230 miles north of Oahu. Such an odyssey could only occur because the IJN recently developed the capability to fuel heavy ships under way similar to its principal opponent, the U.S. Navy, and greatly exceeding Britain’s Royal Navy. On 7 December (8 December, Tokyo time), Nagumo delivered a crushing assault by 350 aircraft in two waves that nearly annihilated the Pacific Fleet. The cost of such colossal results was only twenty-nine planes (with many others shot up), five midget subs, and sixty-four lives.3
One bold and brilliant stroke transformed the entire character of naval warfare, although even Yamamoto did not fully fathom the extent of his revolution. His massing of six powerful carriers was totally unprecedented when all other navies reckoned their carriers in units of ones or twos. Yamamoto’s innovation equated to a kind of 1941 atomic bomb. U.S. naval intelligence never understood prior to 7 December that Japan fashioned a single operational task force completely around several carriers, instead of the usual practice of attaching individual carrier divisions to different fleets. Each of the three principal Pacific Fleet task forces included only one carrier, with no immediate plans of operating more than one carrier together. Not having as yet made the huge intellectual leap of thinking of carriers in multiple units, it is hardly surprising that the U.S. Navy brass did not accord their future opponents any more insight in that regard. The high command simply did not believe that a single carrier raid could seriously harm Pearl Harbor. It was truly a miracle the two U.S. carriers in the Hawaiian region, the Enterprise and Lexington, survived the outbreak of the war intact, while the Saratoga, the third, happened to be at San Diego. A few days after the Pearl Harbor attack, Capt. Charles H. “Soc” McMorris, the Pacific Fleet War Plans officer, conceded Japan’s failure to destroy the U.S. carriers left Cincpac a “very powerful” weapon, but certainly it was one that neither he nor his boss Kimmel had truly appreciated.4
Thus the aircraft carrier supplanted the battleship as the major factor in the Pacific naval war. The same, Fletcher discovered, was more or less true for battleship admirals. Had the massive fleet campaign in the central Pacific unfolded as Kimmel envisioned prior to 7 December, Fletcher, although a well regarded subordinate, would have played only a relatively minor role. Now as the fighting fell to the more junior admirals, Fletcher proved to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Two days after he returned to Pearl Harbor he received a combat mission of great importance—relief of embattled Wake Island two thousand miles west of Oahu. His new task force comprised the Saratoga, three cruisers, nine destroyers, a seaplane tender transporting ground reinforcements, and a fleet oiler. Therefore Fletcher, a trusted flag officer who nevertheless totally lacked naval aviation experience, stepped into carrier command that afforded him an extraordinary opportunity to be among the first U.S. admirals to fight a new form of naval war. No one else played a more important role in the crucial 1942 carrier battles that helped turn the tide of war in the Pacific.
Born on 29 April 1885 in Marshalltown, Iowa, the son of a Union veteran, Frank Jack Fletcher grew up in comfortable middle-class circumstances. His uncle Frank Friday Fletcher, an 1875 Naval Academy (USNA) graduate, inspired his naval career. Fletcher himself graduated from Annapolis in 1906, ranked twenty-sixth out of 116 midshipmen. His years at Annapolis overlapped numerous other midshipmen, who some forty years hence played a crucial role in his life as well as the nation’s. Fellow members of the class of 1906 included Aubrey W. Fitch, Robert L. Ghormley, John S. McCain, Leigh Noyes, Milo F. Draemel, and John H. Towers. Among other future admirals were William F. Halsey Jr. and Husband E. Kimmel (class of 1904); Chester W. Nimitz, H. Fairfax Leary, and John Henry Newton (class of 1905); Raymond A. Spruance, Robert A. Theobald, and Patrick N. L. Bellinger (class of 1907); and Thomas C. Kinkaid and Richmond Kelly Turner (class of 1908).5
Fletcher rose to flag rank in November 1939 after a conventional succession of sea and shore duty postings. His first command, while an ensign in the Asiatic Fleet, was the destroyer Dale in 1910. Fletcher thrived. In 1911 the Dale placed first among the navy’s twenty-two destroyers in spring battle practice and won the gunnery trophy. Capt. Frank Friday Fletcher wrote Frank Jack’s father: “I am more proud of his having won this trophy than if I had won it myself.” In April 1914 when Rear Adm. Frank Friday Fletcher led the occupation of Veracruz, Lt. Frank Jack Fletcher commanded the chartered mail ship SS Esperanza and spirited 350 civilians to safety while under fire. Later he ran the train that brought endangered foreigners from the interior, negotiating safe passage with the mercurial Mexican authorities. Fletcher’s able service at Veracruz earned a commendation for gallantry from his uncle, which the navy upgraded in 1915 to the Congressional Medal of Honor.6
In November 1917 in the war against Germany, Fletcher undertook a riotous voyage to Britain in the ex-yacht Margaret (SP-527) of the Scout Patrol, a motley collection of converted civilian ships aptly known as the “Suicide Fleet.” The Maggie proved less seaworthy than the craft she was supposed to tow. In 1930 one of her officers reminisced: “[Fletcher] was the kind of officer to say ‘orders are orders’ and fight a rowboat against a sixteen-inch gun, trusting to his own skill to pull him through. And that skill was superb. Many a time, save for his flawless seamanship, the Maggie might have ended her career as a warship a good deal earlier than she did.” In mid 1918 Commander Fletcher led the destroyer Benham on convoy duty in the North Atlantic, where he got to roll depth charges only four times and never knowingly harmed a U-boat. On 22 July the Benham was damaged in a collision with the destroyer Jarvis, but a court of inquiry cleared Fletcher of any blame. In 1920, like most wartime ship captains and destroyer skippers, he received the newly instituted Navy Cross, at that time the navy’s third highest decoration for gallant and distinguished service.7
In the early 1920s while in the Asiatic Fleet, Commander Fletcher commanded in succession the old gunboat Sacramento and two submarine tenders, with the additional duty of running the submarine base at Cavite. From 1927 to 1929 he was executive officer of the hard-luck battleship Colorado and weathered another collision where a passenger steamer was completely at fault. Thereafter he completed the senior course at the Naval War College and attended the Army War College. Such scholarly duty furnished vital background in strategic thought and operational planning. Captain Fletcher became chief of staff to Adm. Montgomery Meigs Taylor, the doughty commander in chief of the Asiatic Fleet. Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in September 1931 and subsequent incursion into southern China gave Fletcher experience in naval diplomacy and a firsthand look at how the Japanese navy functioned in action. The coveted battleship command came in 1936 in the New Mexico, rated overall the number one in the Battle Force. With the help of subordinates like Lt. Hyman G. Rickover, the assistant engineer officer, Fletcher further enhanced her reputation as a crack warship. The New Mexico received the engineering trophy for the second and third years in a row and also took two of the three top prizes for gunnery. Providing oil to destroyers during a severe storm in the Aleutian Islands earned Fletcher a commendation for refueling in a “smart seamanlike manner.” Two of Fletcher’s former New Mexico officers recalled favorable impressions of their old captain, one calling him a “very, very fine naval officer.”8
Yet Fletcher bore the taint of having benefited from pull in high places, starting with his uncle, who in September 1914 rose to commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet. Fletcher joined his staff as aide and flag lieutenant, and thus became known to the navy’s senior leaders and the political movers and shakers in Washington. It was during that tour the navy awarded the Medal of Honor to thirty naval officers, including both Fletchers, and nine marine officers for Veracruz. That was in addition to the sixteen medals already presented to enlisted men. Although instituted in 1861, the navy’s Medal of Honor was not authorized for officers until March 1915, when it was still the navy’s sole decoration both for gallant and distinguished service. Not until 1919 did the navy create other awards for lesser acts of gallantry as part of a “pyramid of honor.” By their very number the fifty-five Veracruz Medals of Honor became controversial. Frank Jack Fletcher was always reticent about his award and never flaunted the coveted decoration, although other recipients certainly found it valuable for their advancement. The award also engendered envy.9
Another source of envy was Fletcher’s status as one of the fabled “Washington Repeaters,” whose frequent forays within the corridors of power raised the ire of the less politically connected. According to Adm. James Otto “J. O.” Richardson, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet (Cincus) in 1940–41, duty in the Office of Naval Operations and the Bureaus of Navigation (Bunav) and Ordnance (Buord) offered “a sure way to Flag rank.” Fletcher served two tours in Washington in the 1920s. In 1933–36, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through a strong expansion of the navy, Fletcher was aide to Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson. In 1938 Roosevelt named Richardson chief of the Bureau of Navigation, but scolded: “Now remember, no repeaters in Washington.” Richardson responded he must have a few “repeaters” in key positions to run the bureau effectively. Primarily he meant Fletcher, who relieved Capt. Chester Nimitz, another Richardson protégé, as assistant chief.10
In November 1939 Fletcher became the eighth member of the class of 1906 “frocked” as rear admiral. He received Cruiser Division (Crudiv) Three, part of Cruisers, Battle Force, U.S. Fleet, based on the West Coast. Crudiv Three comprised four old Omaha-class light cruisers, commissioned in the early 1920s. Over the winter he participated in training exercises, drills, and inspections, followed in April 1940 by Fleet Problem XXI in Hawaiian waters under Richardson, the new Cincus. In simulated night combat Fletcher lost his two old crocks to two new Brooklyn-class light cruisers. During the second phase he surprised and neutralized the opposing air base on Johnston island, a small atoll seven hundred miles southwest of Oahu. “The unusual thing about this minor operation,” Fletcher mused in his report, “was that it worked out almost exactly as planned.” A few nights later the opposing fleets blundered into an unplanned major night engagement. Fletcher helped repulse a couple of heavy cruisers attempting to break through the screen to get at the transports. The melee offered a sobering warning of the poor quality of night attack training in the U.S. Fleet, a lesson that went unheeded. The top leaders thought the fleet would enjoy the benefits of radar before ever fighting at night for real, but the Battle of Savo would prove that radar alone was not the answer.11
In June 1940 Fletcher stepped up to Crudiv Six, one of three heavy cruiser divisions in the Scouting Force, U.S. Fleet. His new ships were the New Orleans, Astoria, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, powerful ten-thousand-ton ships commissioned in 1934. They had a main armament of nine 8-inch guns and eight 5-inch/25 antiaircraft guns. Although designed according to naval treaty restrictions, the New Orleans class enjoyed somewhat increased protection, but less fuel and hence considerably less range. Fletcher prepared his four heavy cruisers to fight by supervising their operational readiness and material well-being. Joint exercises and minor fleet problems allowed practice steaming in different formations, night fighting (although Crudiv Six lacked radar), air defense, and other specialized tactics, as well as gunnery and, to a limited extent, underway refueling. Fletcher led task groups and honed his command skills.
Near the end of November 1941 Fletcher learned he would soon relieve Rear Adm. John Henry Newton as Commander, Cruisers, Scouting Force, for administrative charge of all twelve heavy cruisers and direct control of Crudiv Four (Chicago, Louisville, Portland, and Indianapolis). The change was to occur about 17 December, when Fletcher’s own relief, newly promoted Rear Adm. Thomas Kinkaid, reached Pearl Harbor. Fletcher was delighted with the assignment of Kinkaid, an old friend. His other admiral would be Raymond Spruance, leader of Crudiv Five. In the meantime Fletcher anticipated one more cruise as Commander, Cruiser Division (Comcrudiv) Six on another minor fleet exercise.12
On 27 November, however, Kimmel received a sobering dispatch from Adm. Harold R. Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). “This is to be considered a war warning,” for “an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days.” Washington, no less than Kimmel himself, assessed the immediate threat squarely in the Far East. Japanese preparations to strike Malaya, Hong Kong, and the Philippines were obvious. To Kimmel and the few senior officers and staff with whom he shared the message (Fletcher not among them), the initial task was to enhance readiness. Should war break out, the fleet would swiftly sortie and execute diversionary strikes against Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands. Aware that Wake was a likely flashpoint, Kimmel directed Vice Adm. William Halsey to have the carrier Enterprise transport a dozen marine Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats to Wake. The two admirals discussed the war warning and the real possibility of encountering hostile forces while on the way there. Halsey resolved to blast anything he found in his way. Any Japanese warships found cutting between Wake and Oahu could be up to no good. Once near Wake he could encounter long-range planes searching northeast out of the Japanese Mandated Islands of Micronesia (commonly known as the Mandates). Halsey’s Task Force 8 (TF-8) sailed on 28 November with the Enterprise, three heavy cruisers, and nine destroyers. He was to fly the fighters to Wake on 4 December (east longitude date) and return to Pearl on the morning of the seventh. To deliver marine scout bombers to Midway, another vital island outpost 1,130 miles northwest of Pearl, Kimmel formed Task Force 12 (TF-12) under Admiral Newton, with the Lexington, three heavy cruisers, and five destroyers, including Fletcher in the Astoria, the sole available component of Crudiv Six.13
USS Astoria (CA-34), 11 July 1941. The cruiser was Admiral Fletcher’s flagship in December 1941.
Courtesy of National Archives (19-N-25346), via Jeffrey G. Barlow
A belief that war was imminent persuaded Kimmel to position his two available carriers in support of his outlying bases. Recent sightings in the Far East detailed Japanese forces heading south through the South China Sea toward British Malaya, a provocation that could not be ignored. Early on 5 December, as TF-12 sailed from Pearl, a Japanese intelligence agent on shore reported via the Hawaiian consulate radio that a carrier and five cruisers departed Pearl. The Pacific War was two days off. While continuing special antisubmarine patrols off Oahu, Kimmel allowed many sailors one last liberty night before they got back to work on Sunday, 7 December. By that dawn Halsey, his Wake mission successful, closed within 250 miles of Pearl. Rough seas, though, hindered fueling of his destroyers from the heavy ships and forced him to slow down and delay his arrival until afternoon. At the same time Newton’s TF-12 drew within 450 miles of Midway and made ready to launch the marine scout bombers. For his own part Fletcher anticipated a quiet Sunday in flag plot planning for the upcoming exercise. However at 0815, a plain language dispatch from Cincpac shattered the routine. “Air raid on Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill.” Tragically for America as well as the Pacific Fleet, Japanese carriers just knocked Kimmel’s war plan into a cocked hat, altered naval warfare forever, and gave Fletcher his opportunity to lead carriers.14
By December 1941 Frank Jack Fletcher had served thirty-nine of his fifty-six years in the U.S. Navy, including more than twenty-two years at sea. Of medium height, he had a slender, fit build, with straight black hair, a broad, high forehead, “smiling brown eyes,” and a weathered, ruddy complexion. “Trigger-quick on repartee,” Fletcher maintained a “sunny disposition and a hearty laugh.” A proud, confident man who enjoyed company, he was also unassuming and down to earth, without a trace of ego or theatrics. A characteristic anecdote perfectly illuminates his personality. In March 1939 Richardson’s acting flag secretary in Bunav, Lt. Cdr. George C. Dyer, tried to keep the endless correspondence flowing smoothly, but he became exasperated when Fletcher did not take immediate action on memoranda that lay on his desk. Dyer boldly braced the assistant chief: “Your problem is you don’t work hard enough.” Far from taking umbrage, Fletcher was highly amused. He introduced Dyer to a group of fellow senior officers as “the young fellow who tells me I don’t work hard enough.” As Dyer recalled, Fletcher never let up teasing him about it, and they became “fast friends.” Dyer added: “I, of course, got to know him very well, and to like him very much.” He thought Fletcher showed “wonderful judgment, but he had a tendency not to do things” (a trait shared with the brilliant Spruance). Never keen on paperwork (exasperating future historians as well as Dyer), Fletcher was too much of an old hand to get immersed in details and lose sight of the big picture. Nor did he unduly interfere with subordinates.15
Determining Fletcher’s true ability as a commander as revealed in the critical carrier actions of 1941–42 is the central purpose of this book. He never owned the reputation of a naval intellectual or profound theorist. His friend Vice Adm. William Ward “Poco” Smith, who fought under him at Coral Sea and Midway, privately conceded Fletcher was “not the smartest Task Force Commander of the war.” Moreover, a former member of Admiral Nimitz’s Cincpac staff anonymously described Fletcher as “a big, nice, wonderful guy who didn’t know his butt from third base.” Such anonymity conceals possible prejudice or bias. Superior intelligence alone is not the sole or often the most important gauge of a successful commander. A practical nature, strong nerves, flexibility, and an open mind are even more essential. Smith understood this, calling Fletcher “a man’s man,” who “made quick decisions, usually the right ones.” Considering the stress under which Fletcher had to function in fighting the desperate 1942 carrier battles, that was high praise. Readers must judge for themselves, based on the evidence, much of which has never before been presented, whether Fletcher indeed measured up to the job.16
In 1914 during the fighting at Veracruz, Lt. Frank Jack Fletcher witnessed the very first American aerial combat missions. It was the first of several occasions in which he was present during key events in the history of naval aviation. The U.S. Navy’s love affair with the airplane bloomed in November 1910, when Eugene Ely, a civilian pilot, lifted his primitive biplane off a wooden deck laid on the bow of the cruiser Birmingham, the first time an airplane took off from a ship. Ely made the first shipboard landing two months later on a similarly rickety platform installed on the armored cruiser Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter the first U.S. naval officers began flight training, among them Fletcher’s classmate Lt. John Towers, who qualified as naval aviator number three. The pioneer naval aviators were a proud bunch, eager to show the rest of the navy the potential of the airplane, but well aware it was a hard sell to skeptical battleship officers. By spring 1914 an aviation detachment equipped with small flying boats trained at Pensacola, the cradle of U.S. naval aviation. Some came south to support the Veracruz landing. Beginning 25 April Lt. Patrick Bellinger reconnoitered Mexican positions, and for his trouble suffered bullet holes in his aircraft.17
In 1919 while he had the destroyer Gridley, Commander Fletcher took a minor role in another pivotal event of naval aviation, the transatlantic flight of NC flying boats led by Towers. Operating off the Azores, the Gridley served as one of the many destroyers stationed all along the route to guide the planes. On 17 May her signals helped direct the NC-4, the only aircraft to reach the Azores. Subsequently while searching for Bellinger’s downed NC-1, Fletcher found its crew safe on board a Greek freighter that tried to tow the awkward aircraft. Rough seas prevented transfer of the aviators to the Gridley, so Fletcher stayed with the derelict seaplane until relieved. Soon afterward the Gridley acted as one of the guard ships for the final leg of the flight of the NC-4 to England.18
In early 1928 while executive officer of the Colorado, Fletcher endeavored to take his career in a whole new direction by enrolling for flight training. By the mid 1920s naval aviation still suffered the opprobrium of the new gimmick lacking true importance in the navy’s overall mission. A “gun club” denizen condescendingly warned one aviator-hopeful to “keep out of the side shows and get back into the main tent.” However in September 1925, in the aftermath of the airship Shenandoah disaster, President Calvin Coolidge formed a special aviation board chaired by Dwight W. Morrow to examine aviation policy. Retired Rear Adm. Frank Friday Fletcher was the navy’s sole representative. The Morrow Board conducted extensive hearings and among other things recommended against an independent air force such as the one in Britain. Its findings led to legislation that strengthened naval aviation. In 1926 Congress not only authorized expansion to one thousand planes in five years, but also restricted command of the growing number of aircraft carriers, seaplane tenders, and naval air stations solely to naval aviators (pilots) or naval aviation observers. Those were the billets long desired by the pioneers like Towers who learned to fly as young officers.19
With most aviators still very junior, there was no ready supply of qualified flag officers, captains, and commanders. Aware of the problem, Rear Adm. William A. Moffett, the chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics (Buaer), himself qualified as an observer in 1922 and started recruiting a limited number of line captains and commanders to take flight training. Many pioneer aviators detested these newcomers as opportunists, dubbing them “Johnny come lately” (usefully abbreviated JCL). In 1939 one proud original naval aviator explained, “[Moffett’s] idea [was] to induct more rank into the game so that it would ‘draw more water’ in the service. This caused a bad situation in two ways, it blocked off the possibilities of advancement in billets . . . for the more junior officers who had been here for a moderate or a long time, and secondly it put officers in responsible billets for which they were not qualified by experience.” He did not speak for all the younger aviators. H. S. Duckworth (USNA 1922, wings 1924) served as flight instructor for some of the older aviator trainees, and thus knew them well. He “never resented their rank or their wings” and “never knew one who tried to tell us how to fly/run our squadrons.” Duckworth was “always glad to have their experience running the carriers & the big organizations” and judged the JCLs “willing for our opinions to be heard when we felt our flying experience outweighed their rank & age.” The training program lasted until 1937, with some thirty-eight senior officers qualifying as naval aviators or observers. JCLs like Joseph M. Reeves, Ernest King, William Halsey, Aubrey Fitch, John McCain, and Frederick C. Sherman served as powerful advocates for naval aviation and held the fort until the pioneers could lead in their own right.20
There is no indication in the surviving sources why Fletcher requested naval aviation. Certainly he consulted his Uncle Frank, who always looked out for his welfare and was well able to offer counsel in that regard. More rapid advancement might have seemed possible in naval aviation than via the crowded battleship route. Fletcher would have been well placed, having already been executive officer of a capital ship. One should not discount the possibility he was genuinely interested in airplanes. It was a glamorous time because of the transoceanic flights. Naval aviation itself had come a long way since the first U.S. carrier, the converted collier Langley (CV-1), was commissioned in 1922. Fletcher frequently saw the “covered wagon” exercising with the Battle Fleet. Two far more impressive carriers, reconstructed battle cruiser hulls, were in the offing. At nine hundred feet, the Lexington (CV-2) and Saratoga (CV-3) were the longest warships in the world. They displaced thirty-three thousand tons with a top speed of thirty-three knots and carried eighty or more planes.21
Fletcher’s eyesight proved inadequate for pilot training. Again the available sources are silent as to how he responded to his rejection. Clark G. Reynolds charged in his superb biography of Towers that in the late 1930s Fletcher “persistently denigrated naval aviation during cocktail chatter,” to which Towers supposedly commented: “[Fletcher] doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s no use discussing it.” Highly conscious of his role as the pioneer-aviator crown prince, the supersensitive Towers warred not only against non-aviators like Fletcher, but also the despised JCLs. What he considered “denigrating” to naval aviation might simply have been a difference of opinion. Besides, Fletcher was a rival who always seemed one step ahead. The crucial point is that in December 1941, Fletcher found himself thrust into the role of wartime carrier commander without even a veneer of aviation training. The old aviators like Towers never forgave the luck of the draw that gave him the unique opportunity to be the first to take carriers into a naval battle.22
Although not as formidable in numbers and certainly not in combat experience as its Japanese counterpart, the U.S. carrier force also evolved considerably since the late 1920s. Venerable Langley was relegated to seaplane tender, but huge Lexington and Saratoga remained the cornerstone of the carrier fleet. Commissioned in 1934, the Ranger (CV-4) proved an unsuccessful transitional concept. However, the 1937 Yorktown (CV-5), shorter and smaller than the Lexington, was equally fast and capacious, as well as of much more modern design. Her sisters were the 1938 Enterprise (CV-6) and the slightly larger Hornet (CV-8), commissioned in October 1941. In between, the 1940 Wasp (CV-7) was smaller because of naval treaty constraints, and less well protected than the Yorktown. As of 7 December 1941 the Lexington, Saratoga, and Enterprise served in the Pacific Fleet, the rest in the Atlantic. Eleven superb Essex-class carriers—twenty-five thousand tons displacement, all of the latest gadgets—were under construction, but the first would not be ready to fight until the middle of 1943.
Instead of the heavy shells and ship-launched torpedoes of surface warships, the bombs and torpedoes of the carrier’s aircraft constituted her main battery. Executing highly accurate dive bombing (pioneered by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps), the two-seat Douglas SBD-2 and SBD-3 Scout Bombers (nicknamed “Dauntless”) could tote a powerful 1,000-pound bomb. Robust and long-ranged, if not particularly fast, the SBDs also flew searches and antisubmarine patrol, and served as “smokers” laying smoke screens to shield friendly forces during fleet engagements. Their only real flaw was the lack of folding wings that cost valuable storage space. The three-seat Douglas TBD-1 Torpedo Bomber (“Devastator”) lugged either one 2,000-pound Mark XIII aerial torpedo (an abysmal weapon prone to malfunction) or three 500-pound bombs for horizontal bombing. In service since 1937, the TBD was slow, short-ranged, and vulnerable. Its replacement, the excellent Grumman TBF-1 Avenger, existed only as a prototype. The carrier fighting squadrons flew the rugged Grumman F4F-3 and F4F-3A Wildcat fighters (that lacked folding wings), or in the Lexington, fragile Brewster F2A-3 Buffaloes. Both fighters featured four powerful .50-caliber machine guns. The excellent gunnery training and superior tactics of their pilots constituted their principal advantage in combat. These carrier planes were all single-engine designs with stubby airframes strengthened for shipboard landings. They were deemed inferior to their sleek land-based counterparts that could fly higher, faster, and farther and carry much larger payloads. Wartime experience quickly showed that carrier-type aircraft were much better suited than typical land planes to destroy warships and provide close air support for amphibious operations. After Taranto, and especially the Pearl Harbor attack, no one doubted carriers could execute raids of strategic importance.
In December 1941 U.S. carrier air groups comprised four aircraft squadrons: bombing (VB), scouting (VS), fighting (VF), and torpedo (VT). The VB and VS squadrons functioned identically. Most VT squadrons numbered twelve torpedo planes, and the VB and VS squadrons eighteen or twenty-one dive bombers. The chronic shortage of aircraft limited VF squadrons to eighteen fighters instead of twenty-seven. Adding the dive bomber flown by the carrier air group commander (CAG) raised the group’s total to seventy-three planes. As of 7 December the authorized aircraft strength of the Lexington and Saratoga each comprised eighteen fighters, forty-three dive bombers, and twelve torpedo bombers; the Enterprise eighteen fighters, thirty-seven dive bombers, and eighteen torpedo bombers. The Yorktown and Hornet in the Atlantic Fleet were organized in similar fashion to the Lexington. In contrast, the Ranger and Wasp groups each contained two VF squadrons and two VS squadrons, although they operated only one VF squadron at a time. VT squadrons were in the process of being formed for them.
The carrier air group accomplished three basic missions: reconnaissance, attack, and defense. The SBDs flew searches, usually 150 to two hundred miles (in rare exceptions three hundred miles), routinely taking place mornings and afternoons. The accepted maximum strike radius for the SBD was 225 miles with a 500-pound bomb and 175 miles with full 1,000-pound load; the TBD 150 miles with torpedo or 175 miles with bombs. Escort fighters, which lacked auxiliary fuel tanks, ventured no farther than the TBDs. Strikes usually comprised every available SBD and TBD, with at least half the fighters retained for a defensive combat air patrol to protect the task force. Some carriers occasionally supplemented the combat air patrol with SBDs on low-level “anti-torpedo-plane patrol” near the ships. Combat air patrols rotated every two or three hours, so that all the assigned fighters should be fueled and ready in the event of attack. From 1941 onward the great ace in the hole on defense was air search radar that could detect enemy search planes and incoming strike groups far beyond visual sighting distance. That theoretically maximized the capability of the air defense, but effective fighter direction was a complex goal where reality did not always match theory.23
Of all the many components of the U.S. naval service, carrier aviation was arguably the best trained and the most prepared to fight. It ranked ahead of the gunnery and torpedo warfare of the surface ships and even the elite submarine force. The carriers superbly accomplished their prime mission of sustaining aircraft afloat, the skills of the individual aviators proved outstanding, and their squadrons functioned well. That superior performance was the major reason behind U.S. carrier aviation’s remarkable success in the first year of the war against a superb foe. However, serious flaws existed above the squadron level, due to the lack of coordinating doctrine within air groups and between individual carriers. The latter defect concerned top carrier command that remained in the hands of “Johnny come lately” naval aviators and, increasingly, non-aviator surface admirals. The pioneer naval aviators always considered anyone but themselves grossly unqualified to command carrier task forces, but none had yet achieved that goal. By December 1941 only two pioneers (Towers and Bellinger) made flag rank, but both were mired in the vast aviation shore organization they labored so long to create. Fletcher, the unlikely trailblazer in carrier battle, earned their undying animosity. The pioneers, though, were also part of the problem in that the aerial weapon they forged was not always up to the task.
The administrative boss of the three Pacific Fleet carriers was Vice Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., Commander, Aircraft, Battle Force (Comairbatfor). He was the carrier type commander, and hence the navy’s senior carrier admiral. Craggy, outspoken, and thoroughly loyal to his classmate and good friend Kimmel, Halsey was a JCL who earned his wings in 1935 as a fifty-two-year-old captain. He epitomized the navy’s aggressive spirit. His two carrier divisions were purely administrative commands. Halsey exercised direct control of Carrier Division Two (Cardiv Two, his flagship Enterprise and absent Yorktown), while Rear Adm. Aubrey Fitch led Cardiv One (Saratoga and Lexington). Based ashore at San Diego, Fitch functioned as Halsey’s stateside administrative representative, not as an operational commander.24
Prior to June 1941 the Pacific Fleet mainly conducted training through the Battle Force and Scouting Force that comprised the ship and aircraft type commands. Fleet problems and other tactical exercises utilized ad hoc task forces of different kinds of ships divided into task groups and task units according to a numeric nomenclature. Kimmel organized the striking power of the Pacific Fleet into three permanent task forces. Vice Adm. William S. Pye (Commander, Battle Force) led Task Force 1 (TF-1) with six battleships, the Saratoga, eight light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers. Admiral Halsey’s TF-2 comprised three battleships, the Enterprise, four heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and eighteen destroyers. TF-3 under Vice Adm. Wilson Brown (Commander, Scouting Force) controlled the Lexington, the other eight heavy cruisers (including Fletcher’s Crudiv Six), and nine destroyers, in addition to patrol planes, submarines, minecraft, transports, high-speed transports (converted old destroyers or APDs), and the Second Marine Division. However, separate task forces soon appeared for the subs (TF-7), mining force (TF-8), and patrol planes (TF-9). Even so, these task forces were still too cumbersome for actual combat operations.25
The assignment of Fletcher to lead the relief of Wake Island became controversial only much later. At the time it certainly raised no eyebrows. Historian Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison opined that Kimmel “may have doomed his own project by a perfunctory handling of the command assignment.” He should have ignored seniority to reach down to Aubrey Wray “Jake” Fitch, a carrier-wise naval aviator who was Fletcher’s classmate but junior to him. A JCL who qualified as a pilot in 1930 at age forty-seven, Fitch commanded two carriers, two naval air stations, and a patrol wing before taking over Cardiv One in 1940. He excelled in all. Personable and levelheaded, the short, white-haired Fitch combined sharp ability with strong professionalism. Following refit at Bremerton in Washington State, the Saratoga reached San Diego at noon on 7 December to reclaim her air group, take on more planes as cargo, then sail the next day for Pearl as scheduled. Now with the war, Fitch took it upon himself to shift his flag on board and shanghaied three old flush deck destroyers from the sound school to accompany her as antisubmarine escort. With the Sara crammed with more than one hundred planes, including Marine Fighting Squadron 221 (VMF-221), Fitch sailed on 8 December and expected to reach Pearl in four days. Sea conditions dictated otherwise. On 10 December Kimmel designated Fitch the commander of Task Force 16 and ordered him to enter Pearl on the afternoon of the thirteenth. Fitch labored through rough seas, forcing Kimmel to postpone his arrival to the next afternoon. The presence of the Sara was essential as the centerpiece of Fletcher’s Wake relief expedition.26
Morison’s preference for Fitch was based strictly on hindsight. Kimmel did not care if a naval aviator led the Wake relief force. That was not the prime qualification he or his successors sought in the commander of a task force that included carriers. Admiral Brown, a non-aviator, took over the Lexington task force on 8 December from non-aviator Newton. Non-aviators would routinely lead Pacific Fleet carriers in battle until the last was forced out in November 1942. Fletcher’s cruisers comprised the covering force for the Wake relief. Because he had shown himself ready for higher command, the mission was his. However unfairly, Kimmel considered Fitch merely a shore-based administrator. In the past year Fitch had come out to Pearl for only two weeks during one of the Sara’s routine shuttle trips. He never joined in any of the battle exercises. In one key prewar map exercise Kimmel gave command of the Saratoga task group to a non-aviator, Rear Adm. H. Fairfax Leary, Commander, Cruisers, Battle Force (Comcrubatfor), who led the cruisers allocated to that task group. Kinkaid recalled that Kimmel postponed the Newton-Fletcher-Kinkaid round of musical chairs precisely to give Fletcher the Wake task force. Indeed, Kimmel thought enough of Fletcher to put his name third on the short list of “strong vigorous” men from whom he recommended Stark choose his successor if necessary. Kinkaid would accompany his friend Fletcher in the flagship Astoria for a “makie-learn” cruise to Wake before succeeding him as Comcrudiv Six.27