FLETCHER,
Task Force Commander
The Early Years of WWII
by James L Bauer
The story of the dangerous times
and crucial victories of
Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher
He fought the first three of
the great aircraft carrier battles of all time.
He wrote the book on this newform of warfare. It wasn't easy.
The war in the Pacific was
being lost to a rampaging enemy that had
defeated five fleets of three
nations in five months. Then they met Admiral Frank
Jack Fletcher who was armed only with the remnants of a
depression era fleet and a bunch of brave men. The Japanese had ten
battleships and ten carriers. After Pearl Harbor the US had no active
battleships in the Pacific and only three carriers. Nobody had ever fought a
carrier-on-carrier battle before he initiated the attack on Shoho.
Until that time the Imperial Japanese Fleet had lost nothing larger than a
destroyer or a submarine
Fletcher fought the Battle of the Coral Sea in which he attacked the invasion of the Solomon island of Talagi, turned back the invasion of Port Moresby, and stopped the intended aerial mauling of Australia. Though damaged, he rushed to the Battle of Midway where he wielded two task forces to destroy four of the six big carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor in the most important engagement of the Pacific War. He commanded the carrier forces to occupy Guadalcanal and defended that beachhead by turning back a re-invasion force that was double his size in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. There he sank his sixth enemy carrier and saved the Marines on Guadalcanal.
Admiral Fletcher was the most successful admiral of both World Wars By containing the Japanese in the Pacific, he allowed FDR to continue with his Germany First policy. Later admirals won great victories by commanding fleets with dozens of carriers – they could not lose. When Fletcher entered the fray we were losing -- he held the line at the most dangerous time in WW2 until the nation could mobilize industry for victory.
Order