Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal

BLACK SHOE CARRIER ADMIRAL

Vice Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, 17 September 1942.

Courtesy of Yeoman Frank W. Boo, via Dr. Steve Ewing

BLACK SHOE CARRIER ADMIRAL

Frank Jack Fletcher

at

Coral Sea, Midway,

and Guadalcanal

JOHN B. LUNDSTROM

Naval Institute Press

Annapolis, Maryland

This book has been brought to publication

with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2006 by John B. Lundstrom

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2013.

ISBN: 978-1-61251-220-4

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Lundstrom, John B.

Black shoe carrier admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal / John B. Lundstrom.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Pacific Ocean. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Naval operations, American. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Aerial operations, American. 4. Aircraft carriers—United States—History—20th century. 5. Fletcher, Frank Jack. I. Title.

D767.L862006

940.54’5973092—dc22

2005037937

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14  139  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

First printing

All maps are courtesy of the author’s wife, Sandra Lundstrom.

To Elmer Pete Lundstrom, Private First Class, U.S. Army Air Force,

and Bernard R. Weber, Lieutenant, U.S. Naval Reserve,

who did more for me than they ever knew.

Contents

List of Photographs

List of Maps

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Special Terms

Chapter 1The World Turned Upside Down

Chapter 2To Retrieve Our Initial Disaster

Chapter 3The Wake Fiasco

Chapter 4To Samoa with a Carrier

Chapter 5The First Counterattack

Chapter 6To the Southwest Pacific

Chapter 7The Best Day’s Work We Have Had

Chapter 8Alone in the Coral Sea

Chapter 9Nimitz Takes Charge

Chapter 10Clearing for Action

Chapter 11The Battle of the Coral Sea I: Opening Moves

Chapter 12The Battle of the Coral Sea II: 7 May—Offense

Chapter 13The Battle of the Coral Sea II: 7 May—Defense

Chapter 14The Battle of the Coral Sea III: A Costly Victory

Chapter 15From the Coral Sea to Pearl Harbor

Chapter 16Time Is Everything

Chapter 17The Battle of Midway I: Give Them the Works

Chapter 18The Battle of Midway II: Counterattacks

Chapter 19The Battle of Midway III: Finale

Chapter 20A Brief Intermission

Chapter 21Watchtower

Chapter 22The 27 July Conference

Chapter 23From Fiji to Guadalcanal

Chapter 24The Watchtower Landings

Chapter 25The Recommendation to Withdraw the Carriers

Chapter 26The Savo Disaster

Chapter 27Covering Cactus

Chapter 28The Battle of the Eastern Solomons I: In the Land of the Blind

Chapter 29The Battle of the Eastern Solomons II: Anticlimax

Chapter 30The Right of the Line

Chapter 31The Clean Sweep

Chapter 32War on the Periphery

ConclusionAn Excellent, Sea-Going, Fighting Naval Officer

Task Organizations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Photographs

Vice Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, 17 September 1942

USS Astoria (CA-34), 11 July 1941

Rear Adm. Wilson Brown, circa 1945

Cruiser Division Six staff, 1941

Adm. Husband Kimmel, 1 February 1941

Adm. Ernest J. King, 1942

Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., circa 1944

Rear Adm. John G. Crace, RN, 1940

Vice Adm. William Ward Smith

Rear Adm. Spencer S. Lewis, circa 1944

Rear Adm. Frederick C. Sherman, 19 December 1942

USS Yorktown (CV-5), April 1942

Capt. Elliott Buckmaster, 1941

Admiral Fletcher and Admiral Fitch, USS Yorktown, 15 May 1942

Award ceremony on board the Enterprise, 17 June 1942

Rear Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner, circa 1943

Admiral Fletcher receiving the DSM from Admiral Nimitz, 6 July 1942

Vice Adm. Robert L. Ghormley, 1942

USS Saratoga (CV-3), 17 September 1942

Rear Adm. Leigh Noyes and Capt. Forrest P. Sherman, August 1942

Rear Adm. Thomas C. Kinkaid and TF-16 staff, July 1942

Brig. Gen. Melvin J. Maas, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, circa 1950

Capt. Arthur C. Davis, USS Enterprise (CV-6), 22 July 1942

Rear Adm. Leigh Noyes

Vice Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, 17 September 1942

Rear Adm. Dewitt C. Ramsey, 1943

Meeting 8 December 1944 at Pearl Harbor

Maps

Central Pacific

Wake Island relief plan

Situation at 1200, 21 December 1941

Situation at 1200, 22 December 1941

Track chart TF-14, 20–23 December 1941

Situation at 0800, 23 December 1941

South Pacific

Raids, 1 February 1942

Lae-Salamaua raid, 10 March 1942

Coral Sea and vicinity

Carrier operations, Coral Sea, 1–4 May 1942

Carrier operations, Coral Sea, 5–6 May 1942

Task force operations, Coral Sea, 7 May 1942

Carrier operations, Coral Sea, 8 May 1942

Midway campaign, movements to 0000, 4 June 1942

Estimate of the situation, 0600, 4 June 1942

The Hornet and Enterprise attacks, 4 June 1942

The Yorktown attack, 4 June 1942

Carrier operations, 4 June 1942

Carrier operations, 5 June 1942

Carrier operations, 6 June 1942

Approach to the target area

Guadalcanal and vicinity

Task Group 61.1 track chart, 7–9 August 1942

Task force operations, 23 August 1942

Task force operations, 24 August 1942

Principal sighting reports received by CTF-61, 24 August 1942

TF-61 track chart, 26–31 August 1942

Acknowledgments

The present book, the product of some thirty years of research into the early campaigns of the Pacific War, would not have come to pass without the extraordinary help and encouragement of many individuals and organizations. This simple statement of gratitude that names only a few cannot possibly describe my obligation to all of them.

Given my obvious sympathy for this book’s controversial subject, I am greatly concerned not to offer in any way a whitewash of Admiral Fletcher’s actions, but to treat them objectively. Thus I am most grateful to four reviewers who read the manuscript specifically with that object in mind: Dr. Steve Ewing, my close friend and coauthor of Fateful Rendezvous; the distinguished historian Richard B. Frank, who is also a valued friend; Frank Uhlig Jr. of the Naval War College; and Rear Adm. Kenneth R. Manning, USNR (Ret.). They all contributed excellent comments and advice, pressed me to prove my case, and even urged me on occasion to ratchet up the justified criticism of Fletcher’s detractors. Lt. Cdr. Richard H. Best, USN (Ret.), read the chapters up through Midway and offered wonderful comments from his perspective as one of the Navy’s most illustrious dive bomber leaders of World War II. I owe a special debt to Edward M. Miller, author of the seminal work War Plan Orange, who also read the manuscript. Without his stalwart support this book might not have been published. The errors that remain in the text are solely mine.

Other fine friends and associates eagerly aided my research. James C. Sawruk is a peerless researcher of Pacific War aviation who always seems to find key information when it is needed. Robert J. Cressman and Dr. Jeffrey G. Barlow, superb historians at the Naval Historical Center, provided invaluable assistance, as have Dr. Izawa Yasuho, James T. Rindt, J. Michael Wenger, Mark E. Horan, Mark Peattie, William Vickrey, Charles Haberlein, Ronald Mazurkiewicz, and Craig Smith. Steven L. Roca offered not only friendship but also put me up (and put up with me) during my numerous visits to College Park. Dr. Lloyd J. Graybar generously gave me access to the important and irreplaceable correspondence he generated for his excellent 1980 article on the relief of Wake. Two previous Midway authors, Walter Lord and Dr. Thaddeus V. Tuleja, graciously shared their research with me, as did Dr. Stephen D. Regan, who wrote a biography of Admiral Fletcher. Lt. Cdr. Jozef H. Straczek, RAN, provided excellent information from Australian archives. Although we differ strongly on Fletcher, I am grateful to Dr. Chris Coulthard-Clark for his very useful work on Adm. John G. Crace, RN. In the Milwaukee Public Museum, Dr. William Moynihan, previously president and CEO, and my former boss Carter L. Lupton were extremely supportive of my research.

Through the Internet I gained more help than I could have imagined and made more friends. Jonathan Parshall is a kindred spirit whose perspicacity and breadth of knowledge is amazing. He and coauthor Anthony Tully have written the most important new book on Midway in years. I would also like to thank Benjamin Schapiro, Randy Stone, David Dickson, Sandy Shanks, Jean-François Masson, Allan Alsleben, Allyn Nevitt, Andrew Obluski, and Cheralynn Wilson. The Battle of Midway Roundtable, run by William Price and Ronald Russell, has been an important asset in researching that battle.

Among the many participants and their families who aided my research, I would like to mention Thomas Newsome, George Clapp, Norman Ulmer, and Frank Boo, all of whom served directly with Fletcher in the Yorktown and Saratoga. Capt. Forrest R. Biard, USN, graciously answered my queries despite knowing that my opinion of his old boss Fletcher is so directly opposite to his own. Rear Adm. William N. Leonard, USN (Ret.), an old friend from my earliest days of research, offered insights into the role of an admiral in his flagship. William F. Surgi, another VF-42 veteran, and his wife Jean greatly facilitated my early research and took me to visit Mrs. Martha Fletcher in 1973 a few months after the admiral’s death. Vice Adm. David C. Richardson shared with me his recollections of compiling the Naval War College analyses. Col. William W. Smith, USA (Ret.), gave me full access to the papers of his father, Vice Adm. William Ward Smith. The family of Rear Adm. Oscar Pederson, USN (Ret.), also opened his papers to me. John C. Fitch spoke to me of his father Adm. Aubrey W. Fitch and provided copies of his papers. Harriet L. Houck, daughter of Vice Adm. Spencer S. Lewis, furnished photographs, as did Cdr. Samuel E. Latimer Jr. I would also like to thank the heirs of Adm. Sir John G. Crace, RN, for permission to cite his papers in the Imperial War Museum.

Most of the documents utilized for this book now rest in the National Archives at the Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland. Over the years I have been fortunate to work with outstanding archivists Dr. Gibson B. Smith, Barry Zerbe, and Richard Peuser. At the Operational Archives Branch of Naval Historical Center, Kathy Lloyd, Michael Walker, and John Hodges were equally helpful. Admiral Fletcher’s papers are held at the excellent American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming–Laramie, where Carol L. Bowers and Lori Olson copied everything I required. Dr. Evelyn Cherpak likewise opened to me the many important collections of personal papers the Naval War College is privileged to hold. At the Nimitz Library of U.S. Naval Academy, Alice Creighton made available the Vice Adm. Wilson Brown papers. Steve Nielsen of the Minnesota Historical Society assisted me with Congressman Melvin J. Maas’s papers. I am also grateful for the help of Hill Goodspeed of the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS Pensacola. My good friend Paul Stillwell furnished numerous histories from the oral history program at the U.S. Naval Institute, which are key sources for this work.

At the Naval Institute Press, I would like to thank Mark Gatlin for overseeing this project and both Donna Doyle and Chris Onrubia for their guidance in preparing the illustrations. My editor, Mary Svikhart, has shown remarkable kindness and patience in dealing expertly with a manuscript of this length.

My wife, Sandy, my dear partner in this as in all my endeavors, learned the mysteries of computer-generated graphics to draw the maps for me when it was no longer practical to do them by hand as she did for the last three books. She and my daughter Rachel gave me unstinting encouragement, understanding how important it was to me to complete this project.

Introduction

During the first nine months of the war against Japan, the U.S. Pacific Fleet clawed its way back from near destruction in one of the swiftest and most remarkable reversals of naval fortune since the Greeks defeated the Persians at Salamis. Shattered by the surprise assault at Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet was outmatched at the outset by the tough and highly skilled Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). In five months Japan overran the western Pacific and Southeast Asia, gained all its initial strategic goals, and grasped for more. In May and June 1942, in hard-fought aircraft carrier battles in the Coral Sea and off Midway, the Pacific Fleet won victories that not only denied Japan crucial strategic positions, but also inflicted crippling losses. The United States achieved relative parity in naval strength in the Pacific and gained the initiative. On 7 August the Pacific Fleet launched an amphibious counteroffensive in the southwest Pacific. Following seven bitter months, as the advantage seesawed from one side to the other, the Allied victory at Guadalcanal decided the course of the Pacific War.

From December 1941 to October 1942 Vice Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher led forces that contributed decisively to the dramatic turnabout, sinking six Japanese carriers for the loss of two U.S. carriers. In the history of those crucial early campaigns, he is second in importance to Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, the beloved commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet. Only Fletcher participated in all the different phases of the Pacific Fleet’s strategy during that time period. He took part in the futile attempt of Nimitz’s predecessors to hold the vital asset of Wake Island, fought in the early raids, spearheaded Nimitz’s dramatic carrier confrontations at Coral Sea and Midway, and supported the invasion of Guadalcanal.

Fletcher was a black shoe. That color, worn by the majority of U.S. naval officers, was emblematic of the surface navy as a whole, as opposed to the brown shoes brandished by the proud naval aviators. After Pearl Harbor it finally became obvious the ungainly aircraft carrier had supplanted the majestic battleship as the cynosure of sea power. Only other carriers could truly contend with them. However at the outset of the war, Japan outnumbered the United States in that category of warships. The U.S. Navy could only hope to attain decisive superiority in late 1943, after new construction reinforced the fleet. No one could say whether the Pacific Fleet could survive in the meantime. Ideally the admiral who led the U.S. carriers in the first three of the only five carrier battles in history would have been a naval aviator and task commander of vast experience. Instead Fletcher, the non-aviator, happened to be the man on the spot, and thus he bore that awesome responsibility.

Having someone run the show in a new and to him unfamiliar method of warfare would seem the very recipe for disaster. Yet when the odds were never more tilted in favor of the IJN, Fletcher gained three vital carrier victories. In May 1942 the Battle of the Coral Sea prevented the invasion of Port Moresby and handed Japan its first strategic setback of the war. Fletcher’s carrier striking force scored decisive success on 4 June in defense of Midway, although the crippling of his flagship Yorktown gave the laurels to his talented subordinate Rear Adm. Raymond A. Spruance. In August 1942 Fletcher led the carriers (and nominally the whole expeditionary force) against Guadalcanal. Just surviving the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 24 August, his third carrier clash in four months, helped forestall a devastating attack on the marine foothold and prevent the Japanese from landing fresh troops. The South Pacific Force thereby earned an essential breather during a critical portion of the Guadalcanal campaign. Frozen out of carrier command in October 1942, Fletcher returned to combat a year later in charge of the North Pacific Area. In September 1945 he accepted the surrender of naval forces in northern Japan.

No other U.S. admiral—and very few flag officers of any nation—came out ahead in three separate pitched battles during World War II. Fletcher retired in 1947 wearing four stars. The destroyer USS Fletcher (DD-992) is named in his honor. Yet by 1950 he wore the dubious distinction of most controversial figure in U.S. naval history. For all his hard-won accomplishments in battle, he is scornfully remembered primarily for two incidents: the failure to relieve the marine garrison of Wake Island in December 1941 and the supposed deliberate abandonment of the marine landing force at Guadalcanal, which is said also to have caused the terrible defeat at Savo. Historian Nathan Miller wrote in 1995, No American admiral has had a worst press in postwar histories than Fletcher and even though he had won the Medal of Honor during the Vera Cruz expedition of 1914, he has been accused of cowardice. A general history of the era, David M. Kennedy’s Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945, noted of the withdrawal of the carriers from Guadalcanal, The fact remains that Fletcher displayed highly questionable judgment and a conspicuous want of courage. The 1999 memoir of noted author Capt. Edward L. Beach condemned Fletcher (Fueling Jack) as a peacetime commander weak in professional concern for the demands of war, who succumbed to craven caution from on high and his own fears of the unknown. Historians Williamson Murray and marine Col. Allen R. Millett declared in their study of World War II the very cautious Fletcher lacked the character to lead hard-pressed American forces. The most recent analysis of the naval war from Pearl Harbor through Guadalcanal, by a respected Napoleonic-era scholar, astonishingly avowed Fletcher bore the taint of traitor, and that for his cowardice in pulling the carriers out from Guadalcanal, he was court-martialed and relieved of his command. No such court-martial ever took place, and no one else labeled Fletcher a traitor. Such, though, is the pervasive nature of Fletcher’s strongly negative historical reputation, which is based on severely outdated secondary sources.¹

The image of Fletcher as timid bungler is due in large part to his portrayal in volumes three through five of Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison’s enormously influential semiofficial History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. In 1947 Morison wisely observed in the preface of volume one, No history written shortly after the event it describes can pretend to be completely objective or even reasonably definitive. Facts that I know not will come to light; others that I discard will be brought out and incorporated in new patterns of interpretation.² It is time to heed Morison’s admonition and present a major reinterpretation of Fletcher’s role in the Pacific Fleet from December 1941 to October 1942. Those who for more than fifty years accepted Morison’s relentlessly derogatory portrait of Fletcher must now weigh a mountain of new evidence that demands a fresh verdict for a heretofore maligned naval officer who won his battles at sea, but lost the war of objective evaluation.

The present book has long been in the works. In 1974 Rear Adm. Oscar Pederson, who served on Fletcher’s staff in 1942, wrote: I hope you will be able to do a study on Frank Jack Fletcher. I feel he is a forgotten man and I think he made some hard and tough decisions for which not only did he not receive credit, but was severely criticized.³ At that time I had just begun my research on the Pacific War and required the next twenty years to complete three books: The First South Pacific Campaign (1976), The First Team (1984), and The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign (1994), which analyzed Pacific Fleet strategy and the 1942 carrier battles in great detail. That lengthy apprenticeship developed many additional sources and gave me the background better to understand the command decisions that underlay these complex events. Fletcher once told the celebrated author Walter Lord, After an action is over, people talk a lot about how the decisions were deliberately reached, but actually there’s always a hell of a lot of groping around.⁴ In the heat of battle it probably seemed that way, but in fact doctrine and method provided the indispensable framework. The goal of this study is to probe and explain the groping around, and thereby illustrate just how a carrier task force commander functioned both in battle and in the often mundane but vital preparation for combat. Only in that way can Fletcher’s decisions and actions be well and truly judged.

Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Special Terms

BLACK SHOE CARRIER ADMIRAL

CHAPTER 1

The World Turned Upside Down

COPING WITH CATASTROPHE

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.

A MIDWESTERN SAILOR

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

FLETCHER AND NAVAL AVIATION

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

THE U.S. CARRIERS AT THE START OF THE WAR

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