Frank Jack Fletcher: Unsung Hero

hello my name is emilie de PUE and i am a member of the dole institute's Student Advisory Board the official student group of the Institute welcome to the dole institute of politics and thank you for attending today's program presented by the department of military history at the command in stache General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth the Dole Institute would like to hear from you about today's program please let us know your feedback by contacting us on social media or via email at Dole Institute at kayui do to view past programs visit our online video archive at wwl institute org a video of today's presentation will be available on our website soon we'd like to encourage each of you to consider becoming friends of the Dolan stitute our friends help keep our programs free and open and support archived research and our student activities please contact us if you're interested after the presentation we'll be having some time for audience that the audience ask questions if you have a question please raise your hand and a student worker with a microphone will come to you please stand if you're able and ask just one brief question before we begin I'd like to remind you to please turn off your cell phones and now please join me in welcoming director of Department of military history at the command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth Dave Cotter thank you everybody and it's great to be back again and to see a lot of familiar faces we very much appreciate your patronage at these events that we very much enjoy participating in today it's my privilege to introduce to you one of the absolute best members of our department professor John Kuhn John is a retired naval officer and has served at the Staff College for close to two decades his academic excellence has been it has been recognized by a number of different institutions especially at the command and General Staff College where he served as the Major General Staff chair for military history has recently been honored by the Naval War College by being named as the Admiral Ernest King a chair for Naval Warfare and so he'll suit he'll serve a year at at Newport as a visiting professor there his most recent book is about America's first General Staff and it's about the United States Navy board ladies and gentlemen Professor John Q thanks so much Dave I appreciate that okay pretty loud yeah I see a couple familiar faces out there some former professors and everything and thank you for so much for having me hey let's get right to the topic so that we can we can get right there you know one of the things that happens with Jack Fletcher is is that people go well like you know people who have sort of more than a passing familiarity with the history of World War two in the Pacific have heard of the destroyer class USS Fletcher and the assumption is that it's named after this guy but the Navy actually names ships and ship classes after Navy families so the USS Wainwright is not named after one Wainwright it's named after about six different Wainwright's who served in the United States Navy between the Civil War in World War two this and the same thing is true the fletcher class the fletcher family was a navy family and as you'll learn here Fletcher Fletcher wasn't the first guy his uncle was actually in command of of the u.s. fleet the entire US fleet in the intervention in Mexico in 1914 in the Wilson administration so so the destroyer class was actually named after the family and act we came out during World War two it was already in the works to be produced before some of the victories that are associated with Fletcher's name occurred so so that's that's just sort of an interesting tidbit to start things out with well that's a great picture of Jack Fletcher because it helps us understand the answer to our question ok so what is Great Britain for got Nelson would never happen would it Horatio Nelson wins the greatest victory in British naval history of course you're not going to forget him and then there's all these other battles that he won the Nile and cope and Hagen and and his his coming out at st. Vincent's in all these other places so you know it would be as if Great Britain forgot Nelson not quite okay not quite you know when you think about it at the time Fletcher was beginning to serve in the Navy there was a guy who was like that it was sort of the American Nelson in his name was was Admiral George Dewey the only Admiral of the US Navy in navy history he's not a fleet admiral but he is Admiral of the u.s. Navy some people call it is the only six star Admirals so so maybe George Dewey but even George Dewey has been forgotten to some extent which kind of shows you the difference between the United States perhaps and Great Britain and and that little dot dot dot would it be like that well let's I I don't think it would be because Fletcher's an interesting guy he's the forgotten Admiral but here's why it's always bothered me about Fletcher it's always bothered me about Fletcher so he's the only Admiral on active duty at the time World War two starts with both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross so he's the most decorated in terms of seniority of Ward's Admiral on active duty in the United States Navy when World War two breaks out now there's some caveats to that we went we might get into some of them when we go into his background he wins the first victory I characterize it as an operational victory in the Pacific War in World War two in the Pacific against the Japanese he's the first guy to kind of in a victory he's in command when that happens he's the senior officer president of float and something that we call the officer and tactical command and that's Frank Jack Fletcher not a brown shoe Admiral but a black shoe Admiral a Surface Warfare Admiral okay a cruiser guy so he wins that first victory that's a pretty big deal you'd think we might remember him he's also in command at Midway at least at the beginning he's in command Nimitz puts him in charge all right Nimitz puts him in charge he's actually very highly thought of at the time and that's a key thing and Fletcher is actually very highly thought of at the time these things are taking place and and the forgetting is a process that actually starts sort of while he's in command during these victories but he's in command at Midway and so he's the guy who should get the credit for that victory the the three of the four Japanese aircraft carriers that were sunk were sunk while Fletcher was in command not while Spruance was in command okay and so why has he forgotten well let's answer that question this is gonna be fun all right bottom line up front he's not a self-promoter he's a quiet unassuming guy he doesn't match that idea of the impossible loud brash naval hero that Nelson is this self-promoter this guy who's always kind of making sure he's mentioned in dispatches that's not Frank Jack Fletcher okay he's sort of an inside operator right he knows how the Navy works he works in the Bureau of personnel or the Bureau of navigation as it was at a time he said he's a DC guy so he knows how things work he's a graduate of both the Senior War College of the army and the Senior War College for the Navy so he's gone to both the Army War College in the Navy War College senior courses so he kind of knows how things work all right that second piece is jealousy those medals that he gets one of them prior to World War one and one of them during World War there are costs for jealousy by people who think they're better than him all right why you know he doesn't deserve that he only got that because and so we'll kind of look at that and then there's other sorts of jealousies which is like well why do why should he get all the credit for the Coral Sea or why should he get all the credit for Midway right so there's a lot of professional jealousy that plays a role in what happens to this guy he's not the right kind of admiral to command aircraft carriers he's a cruiser guy he's a Surface Warfare Officer at the beginning of on Pearl Harbor day as we'll see he's in command of a screen for an aircraft carrier he's not even in command of the whole aircraft carrier group he he's been trained in carrier operations at the Naval War College as were all naval officers who'd gone to the Naval War College but he's not seen as being an aviator only it's that Billy Mitchell bias only aviators can command aviation units even big ones all right he never wrote self-serving memoirs and he never hired anybody to write self-serving memoirs all right okay or he was never considered worthy of a hagiographic of biography he ticked off a Harvard Don never piss off the East Coast establishment especially in the 1940s because they're running the country all right okay so he actually ticks off a Harvard Don we'll talk about that guy and then after the war there is an active campaign some people might call it a conspiracy all right to write him out of the history of World War two and to marginalize as much as possible any role he played in anything good that happened and and expand and and emphasize anything where it could be assumed that he did poorly in terms of command and his performance okay so that's the bottom line up front that's my answer as to why he's forgotten so he's from the Midwest Iowa you know not far away he goes to the United States naval Academy as all naval officers pretty much did back then he's from a Navy family okay so he's a legacy guy right he's a legacy guy his classmates included some rather interesting people John towers naval aviator number three okay John McCain grandfather to Senator McCain who just recently passed away and father to the commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet during the Vietnam War Jack McCain and commander of task force 38 which consisted of 17 aircraft carriers and their escorts during the Pacific War so John McCain slew McCain one of the original naval aviators who said they called him a johnny-come-lately because he got qualified as an as an aviator when he was a captain robert Gormley a name you don't hear much okay was also his we'll talk about Gormley a brief itch an entire ship is named after a hub refetch of perry-class frigate and some destroyers have been named after Aubrey fritz so these are some of the names and if your enable historian these are these are big names okay they but they were they were part of his classmates in the class of 6.6 well let's talk about the war hero he earns a Medal of Honor in Mexico now so he's you know this is not unusual to have your nephew you know lieutenant Fletcher accompany you on the flagship to a war somewhere he haven't had one since the spanish-american war hey let's get jr. you know let's get Frank Jack to serve with Admiral Frank Friday Fletcher who's the commander-in-chief of the u.s. fleet and let's take him to this thing going on down in Mexico and what happens is Fletcher Fletcher his uncle sends him ashore to help evacuate American citizens and he's on a train with a bunch of American citizens and he actually performs heroic actions in getting these people all the way to Veracruz and evacuated from Mexico including kinda protecting them from Bandidos all right who try to stop the train and take the American citizens off the train and Fletcher actually and in the citation it talks about that but that that metal is always sort of colored funny because they're like well that was the only metal they had back then so they gave him out like candy or it was his uncle it was nepotism the thing about it is he doesn't go around kind of talking about it much it's there on his uniform and if you ask him about it he'll say yeah I got that in Mexico but he's not a guy who walks around like saying hey let me tell you about my Medal of Honor all right so real quiet kind of and and again when you read the circumstances surrounding the medal it's pretty pretty crazy stuff yeah he's not out in the fleet he's asure you know helping evacuate people during what's essentially a humanitarian assistance operation so when World War one starts so we don't have any anti-submarine warfare ships to help but we commissioned all kinds of rust buckets yachts sloops and he actually takes command of an X yacht and begins to do anti-submarine warfare patrol and he actually ends up sort of in command as a lieutenant commander of something called the suicide fleet because people said it'd be suicide to sell this group of anti-submarine warfare ships across the Atlantic at this time of the year to go help the British with the anti-submarine warfare effort but he does one of the things that Fletcher's always very well known for it it sort of explained some things that we're gonna talk about is his flawless seamanship he was a fantastic seaman he and Nelson had that in common all right and then while he's commanding a destroyer in World War one so it makes sense that a destroyer would import be named after him he earns the Navy Cross for helping with convoy duty and anti-submarine warfare duty so he actually wins the Navy Cross now he's criticized for that award as well because I said well everybody got a Navy Cross you know and so he you know he didn't really deserve that because they gave that but not everybody got a Navy Cross and not everybody commanded a destroyer in the North Atlantic now commanding a destroyer in the North Atlantic's not like commanding a destroyer in the North Atlantic day today our destroyers about a 10,000 15,000 tons ship okay back then we're talking 1,500 tons 2,000 tons the things like a little like a little bobber in the North Atlantic anybody ever sailed to North Atlantic yeah I have and has anybody ever sailed the North Atlantic in an older class destroyer I have okay it's not easy to do that so I can appreciate just just maintaining stationed on these convoys in the bad seas so so I suspect he probably deserved the Navy Cross all right I in the interwar years he did something we call climbing the fleet ladder he kind of punched all the right tickets all right yeah he his his uncle was sort of his see daddy he sort of looked out for Jack to make sure that he got the right assignments oh by the way Nelson's uncle did the same thing for Nelson Morris suckling but we always forget that right so so but his uncle's retired he actually commands the submarine base at cavite Bay or a Cavite in in Manila Bay all right so he's actually got command of a non surface ship unit a submarine base in Cavite again he attended Navy and Army War College senior courses one of the few officers to do that he was chief of staff to the Asiatic fleet during the Manchurian crisis that's when the Japanese invaded Manchuria and all the gunboats got into all the trouble on all the rivers the Yellow River the Yanks in other words he's the chief of staff to the guys who run in the sand pebbles around all right so he's got broad broad experience he takes command of the USS New Mexico this was the same battleship commanded by William Moffett the founder of Naval Aviation and the ship does superlatively it's awarded the best ship in the Atlantic Fleet two years in a row and it gets all the battle efficiency Awards of course it helps that the engineering spaces get these battle efficiency Awards because the chief engineering officer is this little lieutenant commander named Hyman rickover okay but I suspect Fletcher knew when he had a good deal going and he knew how to he knew how to get the most out of Hyman rickover anyway so he had a really good thing he's considered a washing repeater in other words in the interwar period ernest king who eventually kind of becomes commander-in-chief of the global navy in world war ii the most powerful admiral that's ever floated the seven seas except he kind of stayed in washington for the most part not on the ships but but king says i don't want these washington repeat these guys to keep coming back to Washington to I don't like them because you know their political operators so he's so he's sort of tarnished a little bit because he does two tours in Washington with one with the Bureau of navigation which is personnel and one with the Bureau of ordnance which is sometimes called the Gun Club so he's also a member of the Gun Club you know these stodgy Admirals that are against innovation and everything and there's a narrative about that when in fact he's not he's he's a sophisticated operator he knows how to take care of programs he knows how to organize personnel but he does have that stain on his record as far as Admiral King is concerned all right he's a protege he and Chester Nimitz are both protegees of the Navy's up and coming Admiral Admiral Jo Richardson and Richardson takes command of the Pacific Fleet and it's Richardson who sort of takes care of these two guys what's the problem with that Richardson is fired by FDR when after 1940 FDR says we're going to keep the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor Pacific Fleet was based up until 1940 in San Diego FDR says we're gonna put it in Pearl Harbor and we're gonna leave it there as a signal to the Japanese that we mean business about their their illegal war in China right and Richardson stands up to the President and says this is not a good idea we don't have the facilities here to support the fleet you're gonna have to put a lot of work into this place before we can forward base the fleet here we should move them back into San Diego yes build up the base but not until it's ready for the fleet and oh by the way I think the fleet is vulnerable here to a surprise attack alright and FDR fires him all right so they he's also got this sort of shadow over his career both he and Nimitz of having you know been produce of Richardson so they they sort of had the wrong guy that was there see daddy he does very well in the famous fleet exercises very very solid performance but his specialty is screening operations and reconnaissance that's his that's his specialty that's what he's considered good at when when Pearl Harbor takes place he's the commander of a cruiser force in the Pacific Fleet he's a a relatively new Rear Admiral he's he's 56 years old 33 of those 56 years over 2/3 of his life he's been in the US Navy ok so a relatively older guy right and there was some some like hey let's get these old guys out of the way and make room for the young guys unless your name is Ernest King right and then don't get rid of the old guys keep the old guys alright his subordinates in the cruiser force were these two guys called Raymond Spruance and Thomas Kinkade so they're both his subordinates he's senior to them he's a pretty senior admiral alright when Pearl Harbor happens he is with the Midway reinforcement force when Pearl Harbor happens that's a carrier group that is carrying airplanes and supplies to Midway to beef it up in case of a Japanese surprise attack so that's why he's not in port when Pearl Harbor happens he doesn't get brushed with that brush of shame that hey what did you do when you were at Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surprised you he's actually out on operations in command of the cruisers cruiser screen well there's there's our geography so here's here's Hawaii there's a wahoo there's Midway Wake Island and we're gonna spend a lot of time down here well maybe not a lot of time but we're gonna spend us because that's where you know that's where he first sort of comes to the attention of everybody as a commander as an opera as a successful operational commander in world war ii and it's also where we might conceivably argue that his career ends as a commander as an operational commander so that's that's the geography there's the overall commander another Jo Richardson so when when husband D Kimmel who's not Richardson guy is I think he's a stark guy or a Lahey guy when it when when Admiral husband Kimmel is relieved of command and Nimitz is tapped to take command of the Pacific Fleet this is a guy who is is is sort of in Fletcher's camp initially he's very protective of Fletcher Nimitz is not an aviator okay he's actually a black shoe slash Submariner he's both and the Navy had a lot of that officers who were qualified in one or more warfare areas it was pretty common back then because they all started out as black shoes right and then some of them became aviators brown shoes and some of them became Submariner s'alright and Nimitz was one of these guys and Nimitz his big thing prior to the war that anybody kind of knew anything about Nimitz was he was he was of expert in personnel policies he was he had he had almost lost his career because he wasn't that great of a seaman Fletcher was regarded as a much better semen than Nimitz in a collision that he had and Nimitz had actually went before to Board of Inquiry and received a bad report card but he wasn't discharged from the Navy and that shows you what zero policy zero tolerance can do it can keep Chester Nimitz from being the right man in the right time in the right place in the civic war but he's he's Fletcher's boss the problem with Nimitz is he's not going to be allowed to choose the guys he wants initially Ernest King is mostly going to choose those guys in concert with the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Franklin Roosevelt that's how much they micromanaged who was in command of the Pacific after Pearl Harbor it's really those three guys FDR Frank Knox and Ernest King and Nimitz will say well I think and they go now we've already made the decision Chet you know just chill out right so so so both Nimitz and Fletcher are sort of you know they're sort of they're sort of under a cloud they have to produce prove themselves the first thing that comes up and again you know this seems chronological but it doesn't it seems like it's something that oh here we go we should have known Fletcher was a loser and we should have forgotten him and not let him command ever because of this thing called the wake relief task so Fletcher is actually there it's supposed to be commanded by Halsey Halsey actually gets sent south in the Pacific and so as Wake Island is being attacked for a second time by the Japanese Fletcher is put in command of the task group to go relieve them and our brief itches his subordinate in command of the aircraft carrier part of the task force and and here's where Fletcher seamanship comes in he's got to refuel his destroyers a Japanese destroyer attacks and damages the Saratoga which takes her out of the war for like the first six months of the war all right so these waters are believed to be submarine infested all right so Fletcher says well I got to make sure my destroyers come with us all the way and on top of it there's bad weather I love it when the critics of Fletcher that say well he was too busy refueling his destroyers to get on down the line and get over there and it's always the amateurs that have never refueled or done this kind of thing and done the logistics that see who criticized this thing particularly in poor weather it's also the slowest oiler in the fleet that's with the rate relief task force so by the time they get within about 250 miles of wake the Japanese are actually accepting the surrender and Admiral pie who's the acting Pacific commander recalls Fletcher pie is crucified for this pie is one of the authors of war plant orange a guy who should be celebrated for that fact in the interwar period but because he recalls the wake wake task force he's regarded as as cautious and a loser and he's actually out of a job all right and so so William William PI takes the fall but after the war the historians will start to look backward and go well here we should have known that Fletcher was cautious one in particular will take this and start a narrative of Fletcher's too cautious he's always refueling so that's when the fueling narrative begins and I got that up on the bullet after that he goes to do Pacific operations in the South Pacific on the Yorktown it's during these operations that that he sort of the cautious side of the myth begins so the first part of the myth and a myth is one of these narratives that takes hold and never lets go right but it's based on flimsy or non-existent or manufactured evidence in many cases so right now he's the guy who spends too much time making sure his destroyers have fuel to protect against submarines which are infesting the area which now we know after the fact they were the Japanese had something on the order of 30 submarines east of the International Dateline looking for aircraft carriers to sink at this time right so but it's during these South Pacific operations that Fletcher's on the Yorktown and they're doing carrier raids initially they raid the Gilberts but there's a particular operation that he's asked to do the people asking to do it are are either in Washington like King or or they're elsewhere and so when Fletcher looks around and goes well you know what do you want me to attack there's nothing to attack the enemy reports which were false made it back to Washington but they never made it to Fletcher and they were false to begin with but this whole idea emerges a Fletcher's a little too he's a little too cautious in another case there was a target they wanted Fletcher to attack and Fletcher didn't attack it because he said there were no targets there that's because there was no bomb damage assessment for the previous attack if they'd done that they would have found that that there were no targets there and Fletcher was really concerned that the Japanese air forces were beginning to build up in the South Pacific particularly on the island of New Guinea and on the island of Rabaul what made mincemeat out of his guys if he pressed in too close to land and tried to attack targets that weren't there okay so subsequent history has said hey in this case caution was warranted by Fletcher but the caution myth starts and now guys like King and Nimitz are starting to go well maybe Fletcher is cautious all right so in March he joins task force 11 under Admiral Brown Admiral Brown's another another guy who's commanding carriers so so Fletcher's a blackshoe Admiral in command of a carrier force all right why he's the senior guy that's how the Navy worked at that time a your senior you get operational command where we don't we're not like the air force we believe naval officers are generalists and they can make can command operational forces so he's on this raid in in march against lay and salamu ah which are in New Guinea right and this is sort of the first time that the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft are received large losses in in contact with the US fleet of course he's not he's not directly in command he's actually under Admiral Brown and at the same time this is going on so Brown kind of gets the credit for this and then Brown gets sent back to Pearl to do something else and Fletcher takes command again alright so at the same time in in the United States the Secretary of the Navy and Admiral King say hey you know we need to rank all these Admirals we have and figure out who's good and who's bad they rank all the Admirals and Fletcher is ranked higher than Nimitz in the rankings okay so so and King is one of the voting members not even ranked his Raymond Spruance but he's ranked higher the only guys that are actually ranked higher then and King King includes himself in the list and he's also a voting member little little conflict of interest they're the only guys ranked higher than Fletcher or Robert Gormley Chester and well know Chester Nimitz is lower than he is Admiral King I think Admiral Leahy all right and Admiral Stark all those Admirals that I just mentioned with the exception of Gormley are four-star Admirals all right so Fletcher's actually one of the highest ranked Admirals based on his contemporaries view of him right so he's actually highly fit fairly highly thought of all these bad things that he's doing to change everybody's mind about him they haven't really taken place all right yeah there's some concerns but there's concerns about Nimitz too in fact John lundström and his wonderful book on Fletcher says Nimitz is almost in more danger of being fired and Fletcher is at this point nobody's even thinking of firing Fletcher but they're actually thinking of relieving Nimitz thinking maybe he's not the right guy for the job what happens is is when Fletcher finally takes over the single aircraft carrier in the South Pacific during the time of the Doolittle raid in March and April a report comes back to King that that Fletcher didn't attack Japanese ships again King has incorrect intelligence Fletcher has a better understanding he's the man on the scene turns out those targets weren't there but King who had just a couple days before ranked Fletcher very high actually sends a really nasty message to Fletcher saying hey why weren't you more aggressive in going after these ships that didn't exist all right now King didn't know they didn't exist but Fletcher did all right so the Coral Sea that's kind of let's go forward here so the Coral Sea is down here the first big Japanese operation after the Doolittle raid is is a attack through the Coral Sea with an invasion fleet to come around here and seize Port Moresby in New Guinea and that way the Japanese will extend their sea and air umbrella towards cutting this sea line of communication with the United States and with the lines that are supporting Australia so Fletcher's in command at this battle right and we'll go back here Joe I wanted to show you where it was he's in tactical command he's got two aircraft carriers the Yorktown in the Lexington so he's in command of the first two aircraft carriers in combat with the Japanese Navy in the war okay now he's actually embarked on the Yorktown right but the Lexington gets sunk all right however we sink a Japanese light carrier the show Ho and also we shoot down an entire Japanese air wing that's based on one of their carriers and we damaged a third Japanese aircraft carrier so in this one battle the Japanese subtract one aircraft carrier from the US or battle and the u.s. subtracts three Japanese aircraft carriers from the Japanese order of battle temporarily one permanently because it sunk one a little bit longer because it's damaged and then one because there's no airplanes to fly on it okay the Japanese aren't like the Americans where they can kind of plug in a new air wing they only have one air wing with one ship and if that air wing gets it righted that ship doesn't sail they have to they have to come up with a new air wing and train new pilots all right and it takes them about a year and a half to two years to train all those new pilots so so the Japanese actually abandon the evasion of Port Moresby it's the first operation of the feet of the Japanese in the Pacific War it's the first setback and and Fletcher's in tactical command well King had command of the Lexington so he's a little pissed because Fletcher manages to lose an aircraft carrier and so instead of kind of thinking of it as a victory he says well we lost an aircraft carrier and we shouldn't have Fletcher and his team learned one of the things they learn is that this air power theory of mass everything and send it to hit the target doesn't work at sea you've always got to keep a reserve because if you go and you hit the wrong target like a light carrier instead of a heavy carrier now you don't have any Schlitz all right to hit the right target and now and and they also learn hey we need to generate more combat air patrol when we are striking another carrier so we need to hold something back we also need to separate our carriers and not keep them so close together all right so Fletcher also learns that so he learns the other thing here and this hurts Fletcher but it helps the United States light command touch he's not a micromanager he practices something that the army loves to talk about mission command he actually practices it but he'll be criticized for that style of command by his superiors not by Nimitz but by but by King hey you should have done this you should have been in so-and-so's and Fletcher's Fletcher was like no I think we got the job done I think my command style is just right well that brings us to Midway all right and and this is the battle that should have cemented Fletcher as one of the major heroes of World War two but again remember all those things I said about him all right so again let's kind of just review it real quick so we can move on here I'm just gonna press something so this is the Japanese plan the Japanese plan is to attack Midway draw out the only two aircraft carriers that they think the United States have all right and and then ambush those aircraft carriers with a Japanese four aircraft carrier force called Kido butai they'll pick those carriers up with submarines all right and that's their plan all right then they'll invade the Hawaiian Islands if they successfully invade Midway and the Japanese the plan is kind of screwy because it's got all these moving parts there's another pretty healthy aircraft carrier group hundreds and hundreds of miles up here to the north days and days steaming away all right and so these forces are scattered over the Pacific and so they're ripe for defeat in detail if the Japanese assumptions that they'll surprise the Americans and that the Americans only have two aircraft carrier are correct all right well Fletcher's Yorktown goes into Pearl Harbor and again logistics wins wins the battle they get the Yorktown out there get it with the enterprise on the Hornet Fletcher will organize this force not as four carriers in a box pattern but two aircraft carriers loosely over here and one aircraft carrier loosely over here if you find one group you're not going to find the other group so Fletcher the minutes leaves it to Fletcher to come up with that disposition all right and Fletcher adopts it based on his experience at the Coral Sea and what does it lead to this is what it leads to so these are Nimitz's instructions to Fletcher okay so we're worried this guy is cautious so let's give him this advice right so they're not worried he's cautious in fact they're worried he might be not cautious enough all right calculated risk you shall mean avoid exposure of your forces to attack by superior enemy forces without Goods prospect of inflicting as a result greater damage to the enemy and this is sort of Nimitz's standing orders to Fletcher when he's in command at these battles we've got two more to go and we'll be done so here's what the Japanese expected they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna have a decisive battle and the war is gonna be won in one day this is what they got they got ambushed by US military aviation under the command of Frank Jack Fletcher again the first three Japanese aircraft carriers are sunk on Fletcher's watch whilst he's in command the Japanese conduct a retaliatory strike against the Yorktown the Yorktown is badly damaged and taken under tow by destroyer Fletcher calls up Raymond Spruance and says I pass command to you go sink that final Japanese aircraft carrier they hear you and and Spruance does okay so but Spruance after the war is made the hero of this battle not Fletcher all right and so Raymond Spruance even though he's under Fletcher's command by the way one of one of Spruance 'as carriers the Hornet never finds the Japanese fleet with its dive bombers it does with its torpedo bombers but how much damage do the torpedo bombers do to the Japanese carriers at Midway none all right so it's only the enterprise dive bombers and then the entire Yorktown Air Wing which includes butch O'Hare that finds the Japanese fleet okay Fletcher's Yorktown group actually sinks the carrier soryu all right and one reason they don't attack the other carriers is one nobody can finally hear you because it's hiding inside a rain squall which is what carriers do all the time I'm a carrier guy we used to hide in brain schools all the time um good place to hide all right and but the other two carriers the COG and a cog II are already on fire and so the commander of the Air Group from the Yorktown that's attacking says hey we'll just make sure that the soryu goes down there's no need for us to attack these other two carriers but the overall operational construct is Fletcher's and again he has a very light touch in command he has a very light touch he does criticize Spruance after the battle in his fitness report he writes sprue fitness report saying hey you might have monitored what the Hornet was doing a little closer alright and that will be held against him by Spruance eventually after the war the fact that he doesn't give him a glowing fitness report for not not commanding a little bit more aggressively with the Hornet which is under the command of Marc Mitscher he's the captain well Fletcher's in tactical command a Japanese a Japanese submarine comes up on the slow Yorktown and sinks it but three three are done so like touch we talked about that the Japanese had been abandoned the invasion of Midway biggest US naval victory in history supposedly and Fletcher and his team to include ray Spruance learn all right and then he gets sent out again all right so nobody removes this guy from command nobody criticizes you don't see anything but he's not he getting any credit either he's not calling in one of the things that happens to Jack Fletcher when he comes back to Pearl Harbor is again here's a guy who's basically been on duty since Pearl Harbor at sea on aircraft carriers for seven months okay III looked at the amount of time in that seven months he probably spent about four weeks of it ashore the rest of the time he's embarked all right in operations that are high stress and and that are unending and they eventually in the South Pacific they're eating canned spinach and water that's what they're eating because King says well as long as they've got canned spinach they can stay on station alright and so so he comes back into Pearl Harbor pretty tired he's won these two big naval victories and Nimitz and Spruance and Kidd are all sort of taking credit for well not Spruance he let's others give him the credit he's a he's a pretty pretty humble guy to be honest but he comes in he writes his fitness report for Spruance and some of his other commanders in the battle and then he's told by somebody hey Admiral there's this guy who wants to talk to you his name is Samuel Elliott Morrison well he's already gotten orders from Nimitz to proceed south at best possible speed to be in charge of operation watched task 1 you guys know that as the Guadalcanal campaign so Spruance only has a couple days before he gets sent to the South Pacific actually on a PBY so he actually goes down there via via via PBY and then embarks the carrier from Nemea so he knew Maia's down here ok so he so he tells him listen I'm tired I need some rest I don't have time to give the guy an interview and so this is when sandal Elliott Morrison begins to go Oh too busy for me the Harvard on it's been assigned to write the history of the Navy in World War two right so the Navy goes out and hires a Pulitzer prize-winning historian from Harvard whose expertise is in the sexual relationships of Puritans with each other ok that's Morrison's bailiwick but he can write naval history and one of the his first contact with Fletcher's Fletcher won't meet him cuz he wants to take a nap alright so so that this is Morrison off don't piss those so there's Nimitz's instructions to Fletcher they haven't changed he's going to be in charge of three aircraft carriers supporting the invasion of Guadalcanal the problem with Guadalcanal is it's not here in the wide blue it's close to land the threats close to land our submarines land-based aircraft alright and Fletcher and and Nimitz talked about this and never said you know you've got all the aircraft carriers in the Pacific Fleet we don't need them getting sunk at this point or otherwise our gambit here at Guadalcanal is going to be messed up ironically Fletcher's biggest defender for this operation is going to be this Marine Colonel who will right after the war and during the war that he thinks Fletcher's decisions were correct one long story short Fletcher sails in to protect the invasion fleet the invasion fleet actually manages to land peacefully at Guadalcanal and overrun the airfield there the problem is nobody does anything to get the airfield ready for land-based air the key thing here is we're gonna flow those airplanes is as soon as we can the marine air and stand up this airbase and then we'll have an airbase that can't be sunk by submarines or by airplanes that can fight the Japanese alright Fletcher says hey I'm only gonna have enough gas because of these high-speed anti-submarine patrols by my destroyers from my aircraft carriers he understands the seamanship requirements and he's having problems again getting enough gas in his destroyers and he sends out the message hey the night of 8th August I'm gonna leave I'm gonna pull back right and so at nighttime when it Carrier aircraft don't fly in World War two the Japanese have a surface force come down the slot the guy who's supposed to pick him up is John McCain the senior McCain John McCain the first slew McCain he doesn't pick him up nobody picks him up alright and again Fletcher doesn't pick him up he doesn't have radar and his airplanes don't have radar so why send him out there to look for you know to have mid airs in the dark so the Japanese conduct this battle of Tsavo island which is the worst defeat of the Pacific War to that point for the 8th for the Americans where you get all these cruisers that get sunk ok I've talked about all this so I'm gonna go to the next one because I've kind of talked about that and maybe we can talk about some of that in the thing but it's a very very confused fight but this is when people start to say Oh Fletcher and he earns new enemy here he earns the enmity of major-general Vandergriff commanding the marine division ashore because Fletcher had said at the meeting hey you know if I run into problems I'm not going to risk the carrier's I'll cover you through the first day of the invasion but then I got to pull back and refuel my guys the other thing that John lundström makes clear in his book is Fletcher expected a carrier on carrier fight he did not think that he would have to deal with surface warfare a surface high-speed surface warfare run down the slot and he he didn't think he was going to have to deal with that so he expected the Japanese carriers so his real concern was that that he would sort of get the triple whammy from submarines Japanese aircraft carriers in Japanese land-based there he does provide air cover that first day they do shoot down quite a few Japanese medium bombers the Betty bombers belonging to the Navy and he does do that alright but he does pull his guys back but he had told Vandergriff that at the planning meeting and now Vandergrift is like this the other guy who kind of rats him out and who also leaves but never gets blamed for it is Richmond Kelly Turner the commander of the landing force and and Turner says well he he'd turned tail and ran the problem is what are you gonna do by the time everybody knows what has happened Admiral mikawa the Japanese Admiral with his surface forces is 400 miles away American carrier aircraft have a range of about 225 to 250 miles if that unless you're gonna send a kamikaze strike and if you send a kamikaze strike they probably still won't find the enemy because he's still going 25 knots year ago and a hundred and fifty 200 knots he's going to outrun you and you're still gonna run so you can't even get these guys with a kamikaze attack so all the criticisms of why didn't flood sure launch an attack right after Sava island why didn't he turn around and he's not criticized by Nimitz at the time all right oh the next and final battle for Fletcher is the Battle of the eastern Solomon's all right let me kind of go back to the map so you can see where that battle is and this is around Guadalcanal the now he does get his carrier battle alright he gets a carrier battle let me kind of do this and take us to a map we need a map in the worst way in that battle Fletcher is also in command so so evidently he didn't screw up enough at Guadalcanal for anybody to relieve him he's still in command three weeks later when the Japanese take every carrier they've got and come South there I you show the zoo ikkaku the show kakou they almost had a fourth carrier to the junior and they come south into this area which is called torpedo Junction because this is where all the American aircraft carriers are going are gonna get tour after Fletcher leaves right and so they come down here and this is the eastern Solomon's they fight this very confused battle and the Americans sink a Japanese aircraft carrier now do they damage some of the US aircraft carriers yes they do but the US aircraft carriers are back online relatively quickly where the Japanese aircraft carrier isn't the other problem too is a lot of Japanese planes are shot down but the Japanese think they've sunk two US aircraft carriers when they've only really damaged one all right and so that goes down as a victory - so we've got victory at Coral Sea victory at Midway and victory at the eastern Solomon's all right there's only five of these big carrier battles in the Pacific War okay there's the Philippine Sea and the other one is actually going to occur after Fletcher leaves at the battle Santacruz all right or another aircraft carrier American aircraft carry the Hornet will be sunk not on Fletcher's watch by the way all right so what happens to him well he's on the Saratoga getting ready for another Japanese attack when the Saratoga is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine the aircraft carriers lifted out of the water Fletcher goes up hits his head on the thing starts to bleed all over the place there's damage he calls the captain up bleeding all over the place Corman's trying to patch him up and he's like no no no and he's telling the guy here's what you have to do to keep the carrier float you need a counter flood here and here so his light command touch he's kind of gone away for a little bit because he wants to make sure he doesn't have another carrier sink because he knows the US only has three left in the Pacific so he so he he takes that carrier and they radio him and say come back to Pearl Harbor on the Saratoga shortly after Fletch leave Fletcher leaves the wasp is actually sunk by a torpedo and her commanding officer is actually court-martialed and fired for for that so you know there's a lot a lot of people getting fired in cashiered so this is not a good time to be in command when he gets back McCain is also recalled because McCain has also been getting bad report cards but Nimitz trusts McCain agos what should we do with Jack Fletcher and he goes well he's getting kind of tired you know he's been at sea for nine months so initially Fletcher is is is it leaves command not because he's fired because they want to give him a rest that three weeks is critical though because it's during that time that King weighs in and says hey you know this guy's past his prime he's not up to speed anymore he's a bad luck Admiral he's only winning every naval bag naval battle he fights so let's relieve him okay and and and and it's it's it's amazing how poorly he's treated by this time the Marine Corps Kelly Turner and even his old friend Nimitz are sending cables to Washington saying uh we're not so sure about this guy when he finally gets to to the District of Columbia he's still on leave nobody even wants to talk to him I mean here's the guy in command at Coral Sea Midway in the Eastern Solomons and in command of all these carrier operations in the South Pacific nobody wants to talk to him or debrief him or get a debrief all right so the word is already out that hey you know this is not the hero we want you know let's get another hero all right and so he's assigned to the 13th Naval District which is sort of in the northwest of the United States he in 1943 he goes to Nimitz and says hey I want to serve again and Nimitz goes you to senior you're a vice admiral he's got a he's a three-star Admiral at this point and gets promoted three-star Admiral after Midway hmm sounds like maybe that was a reward so so he says to Nimitz hey you know if it's my rank I'm only temporary rank three-star Admiral was only temporary back then folks it should be temporary today but that's another thing so so three-star Admiral was the temporary thing so Fletcher says hey put me back to my permanent grade of Rear Admiral and then send me to cut command somewhere I don't care what I command just put me out there use me but Nimitz declines to do that and and then later on in 1943 in late 1943 he is called back to active command in the North Pacific he relieves his former subordinate Thomas Kinkade in command of the Northern Pacific and he spends the rest of the war essentially commanding the northern flank he's in command during the Aleutians or during the later parts of the Aleutians operation and then eventually he takes charge of the lend-lease that's going to give the Russians equipment to invade Japan something called I think it's goal post if I remember correctly so anyway Fletcher ends up in command of that and then he's gonna actually come back into the big picture as part of the overall invasion of command in operation coronet the invasion of Honshu so he's actually rehabilitated to some degree alright however that damage has been done these are his enemies Samuel Eliot Morrison almost immediately begins to weave into his narrative in his publications after the war in the 40s in the early 50s Fletcher is a cautious cowardly man nobody challenges this nobody steps up to defend Fletcher not his old friend ray Spruance not as some time boss Chester Nimitz they all let it happen Morrison is spurred on by this guy one of the most acerbic guys in navy history sort of your classic screamer Richmond Kelly Turner all right even the Marines don't like him but the Marines and Turner agree on one thing they hate Jack Fletcher the Marines dislike him they've got this myth that the Navy abandoned us at Guadalcanal including this guy all right all right despite the fact that the Navy loses something on the order of 4,500 people killed and drowned where the Marines lose something on the order of a thousand people killed during the campaign but the guy de blame for the navy leaving us is Fletcher Fletcher becomes the fall guy for this narrative of the Navy abandoning the Marines and them losing the campaign of Guadalcanal excuse me I forgot they won okay so this guy he writes him off you know he write and again I think with King it's it's it's a jealousy thing he'd been jealous of this guy he's not flashy he's a nice guy he doesn't criticize people there's a guy who used to live here in Lawrence Archie Mills Archie was at the Battle of Midway and then Archie flew PBY the Guadalcanal campaign so I was doing an oral history interview of Archie and aren't she pulled out this box full of photos and stuff from his time in Guadalcanal campaign and he's going through these pictures showing me these pictures and arches he's like ninety you know John you know and here's this picture of Jack Fletcher relaxed with his hands in his pockets like a good naval officer right you know in his whites smiling he looks totally relaxing they go that's Jack Fletcher goes the audible and I go well where was that he goes I think it was in umeå at some sort of social event with the French and I'm like wait what did you think of Fletcher he goes oh we loved that guy he was a nice old guy so so these guys and then this guy after the war captain Richard Bates eventually Admiral Richard Bates takes over the battle analysis division of the Naval War College and Bates weaves into the battle analysis of the Naval War College and works with works with works with morrison to create this alternative narrative of fletcher being either too too risky or too cautious at Coral Sea he criticizes him for being too risky at Midway he criticizes him in Guadalcanal he criticizes him so Bates puts together these battle analyses and nobody ever kind of calls him on it he kind of gets away with it all right the upshot is as a new narrative is created by the marine corps by Bates and by Morrison that Fletcher is a cautious always refueling his destroyed Admiral he wasn't really in command at Midway he didn't really win at the Coral Sea the Japanese thought they wanted the eastern Solomon so they must have won right and so you create this narrative that yeah for let's forget about this guy Fletcher's defenders there won't be any for the longest time Morrison's narrative the Marine Corps narrative is going to stay in place unchallenged and it will be received by young sailors and young Marines until about 20 years ago when John lundström started looking at the Pacific campaigns really closely and he said this he wins his battles but he lost the war in the court of history I'll read that if you have if your heart of reading for it is the habit of mankind to entrust the careless hope what they long for and he use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire questions yes sir yes sir I what exactly I knows a little bit off true but Rochefort the Intel guy how accurate is that that he had a big role in the Midway operation Oh Rochefort has a very very big role you got to remember Rochefort is under a cloud himself rubbish furred like Fletcher is forgotten and it's not until Gordon prangs work that Rochefort sort of gets resurrected for years and years and years rush murders another thing is of course the Intel that Rochefort provides isn't Declassified until the 70s all right so it's it's it's communications intelligence and it's not Declassified until the 70s so but but Rochefort is Rochefort's shop hypo station hypo is doing wonderful work the problem is they haven't broken the Japanese code yet right and the Japanese are really good at radio silence operations now that'll bite them in places like Midway where they really need to turn the radios on and talk to each other all right and say hey we got a bad situation here maybe we should pull back a couple hundred miles and kind of figure things out before we continue this this plan right so so Rochefort is sort of under a cloud after after Pearl Harbor he does give indications and warning and sort of earns Nimitz's trust particularly at the Coral Sea where his guys say we think the Japanese are going to attack Moresby first we've got these codes that represent these key Japanese operations but we're not sure which is which but our assessment of the traffic analysis is they're gonna go after Port Moresby first and that's when nimitz goes all right I'm gonna launch everything I have I can't use the enterprise in the Hornet because I've tied them up in this risky raid on Japan but I can send the Lexington in New York town down there with Jack Fletcher old reliable right and so so Rushford sort of earns his way back into the good graces and nimitz and by the time we get to Midway nimitz really trusts but even so I mean Nimitz is kind of waffling about the call and it's not until the Midway a garrison sends a signal in the clear saying hey we're short on water that they break the key code that the Japanese are using for Midway and they go hey code group da-da-da-da-da is running low on water and then and then then the decision gets made but actually Rochefort has to kind of go the extra mile there and they have to do that deception operation to make the Japanese do that but yeah Rochefort's Intel is key that's the thing about the Battle of Midway folks it's really a group effort it's not just Fletcher winning the battle you know it's like Trafalgar it's not just Nelson winning the battle he's killed in the first 30 minutes all right okay so these things are often team efforts but normally you give the team captain a little credit yes sir Tom how's Halsey interact with Fletcher yeah there's a one there's a lot more so how does Halsey interact with all this and actually bill Halsey William Halsey is actually fairly he's got his partisans right but he's he's actually he actually gets along with Fletcher fine he knows Fletcher is his competition right he'd love to be in command at Midway not Fletcher he's an air guy Fletcher isn't but Hall Z's he's okay the one time that Fletcher is under his command in the South Pacific this was before Halsey takes command a couple months after Fletcher leaves Guadalcanal when Halsey is in command down there some things happen where Halsey gets the credit and Fletcher's guys don't get the credit but it's extremely minor and lundström kind of explains everything but yeah Halsey and Fletcher kind of got along but did he go to bat for Fletcher no in fact if Fletcher sort of becomes persona non grata by 1943 it's really odd and you really have to read lundström book to kind of get a feel for it but you you you know though you feel sorry for the guy you're like this poor guy you know he goes out and wins all these battles and then nobody will give him any credit for it not only that they sort of turn him into this pariah because of this narrative that's coming back from Guadalcanal that he abandoned the Marines and then you ask Samwell at Morrison he goes oh yeah he's a coward and then you ask Richmond Kelly Turner oh yeah he's a coward but Fletcher but hauls he's not on the anti Fletcher team but there's nobody on the pro Fletcher team and Fletcher isn't even fighting for himself you know he's not given new newspaper interviews why I should be the hero of Midway instead of ray Spruance right so so that's part of the dynamic yeah anyone else yes Gary fellow Navy veteran yes what was the the extent of connections between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Fletcher family was there any effect there on Fletcher that's it that's a good question you know the initial object of FDR's ire and and enrage is going to be husband Kimmel all right but yeah FDR and Frank Knox the Secretary of the Navy have no problems firing people before they get all the facts they do that with Richardson they well Richardson is really a civil military relations dispute I mean Richardson says this is a bad idea FDR says well we're going to do it and then Richards continues to grumble about it publicly and so he's removed okay and so you might think that FDR would say well who are the who are the Richardson guys out there I need to keep an eye on them buddy he doesn't do that he does the same thing with pie he's and he's got King kind of he trusts King right so I think if FDR ever thought about Fletcher at all he would have asked King about it and by the time we get to the Guadalcanal campaign Fletcher has lost King's confidence he really has the deserved or not he's lost it and once you lose the boss's confidence you've lost it guys like King and Franklin Roosevelt they never give it back you know Franklin Roosevelt is not Abe Lincoln he doesn't say well I've got something useful for you to do over here okay he basically says okay fine Ernie whatever you say guy's a loser I won't use him anymore the fascinating thing is Nimitz actually resurrects played if there is a defender for Fletcher its Nimitz but Nimitz is worried too much about King kind of saying well you know you've got guys like Fletcher that you're in support of I'm gonna take some of your past so there's there's bureaucratic infighting going on between the commander-in-chief of the US fleet which is an organization and the commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet and and their leaders so there's bureaucratic infighting going on in here Nimitz would like King to stay out of his knickers as much as possible but King can't help himself now you might think that I don't like Ernie King actually I think he's one of the one of the great strategists of the twentieth century in the United States but he's not a friendly person he's not a happy person I mean King has three problems okay alcohol all right cursing and other men's wives although he does restrict himself to army wives and not Navy wives but but so King is not a likeable person all right he really isn't but he's he's a brilliant strategist but he has a micromanager and Fletcher is almost 180 his opposite in terms of temperament and leadership style as an organizational or institutional leader and so that rubs him the wrong way did I answer your question Gary oh yeah he was he was assistant secretary of the Navy you know you know I Fletcher was just a junior commander by the end of World War one and he wasn't on on on FDR's scope that and and he's not on FDR's scope at all and then when Spruance gets the credit for Midway and that begins pretty quickly in fact I'd have to go into lundström again but it might actually have to do with the press coverage there's sort of a press blackout on Midway that takes place because we don't want them to realize that we've broken the codes who's my code guy so so so there's kind of a presser and initially you know the Army has given credit for sinking the Japanese carriers with Louisville bombing when they they didn't yeah they did make him jinkin jenk around which had some impact but but no so FDR is not really aware of Fletcher but what's fascinating is he never brings this guy into the into the neither here Knox bring him in too to do anything oh by the way you reminded me of something with Fletcher so so yeah he's not on their radar scope and he never is okay and that's odd why is that you would think the guy in command at Coral Sea Midway and Eastern Solomons might have a little office call with at least the Secretary of the Navy when he gets back some of this is Frank Knox he is an obsequious patronizing you know butt kisser for FDR he really is he's a good Secretary of the Navy but he's also tells FDR what he wants to hear likes the people that FDR likes and he's not really that interested in he kind of defers to King when judging the competence is the only time that he doesn't defer to King his pie where he says that guy is he's gone he's a loser you know but other than that he defers to King his successor James Forrestal maybe it would have been different now Forrestal does become the assistant secretary of the Navy but again I think by the time Forrestal really starts to wield some power inside the Navy Department you know Fletcher's already has been by that he's a has-been after 1943 Jack Fletcher as a husband even though he ends up in operational command before the war ends so what about the cut to the head so after the cut that they had his banners and everything Fletcher kind of gets back to business and he takes the Saratoga back to brawl the corpsman who treats Fletcher puts him in for a Purple Heart he is the highest-ranking officer in the US Navy at that point in the war to get a Purple Heart he never put himself in for it but the corpsman went well you know I treated so-and-so here's my report and so Fletcher actually gets a Purple Heart in the mail during his leave period when he's wounded on the on the Saratoga yeah Tom actually it occurred to me to wonder if the Ernie Kings alcoholism led him to the army wives or if the army wives drove him to the alcoholism ask more Clark's wife that question came on to her at a party one time but go ahead that's really not my question Fletcher is involved in these are complicated and unprecedented battles there's no collective experience with this before and he does amazingly well in these complex situations at at Coral Sea and Midway and eastern Solomon's but the question is did he have with him a talented the same talented junior staff each time making all this happen yeah that's the great thing about Lundstrom 'he's book he does he has some very very talented people who work with him in this time period particularly his aide his his flag lieutenant is an aviator eventually he will sort of make not butch O'Hare who's the guy oh yeah thatch Jimmy thatch who eventually will sort of become right-hand man to McCain he utilizes Jimmy thatch so he does have a very talented junior staff that's working with him but he also relies heavily on the other staff officers for the organizations that are horizontal to him and also subordinate to him so he's and he's really good at that and lundström brings that out in the book but again it's staff relationships and everything and people go to sleep listening to it on audio but but they're very very important so you make it very good he's got pretty much the same team the whole time and when he loses a guy he's very sorry to see them go he's like oh man how am I gonna replace this particular guy yeah so yeah he does have a very talented but it's not a very big staff I mean we're talking about seven guys as the Admiral staff plus maybe one or two radio operators for these extremely complex widespread far-flung operations with and in every case of course the the two battle fleets are out of sight of each other yeah good question good yeah what else yes sir well I think the more that we study history the more we sort of find these unsung heroes these Forgotten generals forgotten Admirals and so I'm going to use an army example now Fletcher is the Navy's version of Jake Devers okay who's Jake Devers what the heck you know who's Jake Bevers well he's an army group commander the United States has only like four Army Group commanders in World War two and one of them is Jake Devers Jake Devers is not self-serving he doesn't cuss he doesn't cheat on his wife he's good to his soldiers he supports his subordinates he's competent but he's not self-serving and he doesn't write memoirs and he doesn't like Fletcher lives for a long time after the war I mean he dies like in the 1970s and endeavors the same thing is true with Devers so it'd be interesting to write sort of an article comparing the two guys and kind of comparing that and devar's has got his own book that's come out recently that finally gives Denver's all the credit that he could Devers almost ended up being eisenhower the difference is Devers probably would he probably would have never run for president you never know I mean you can never really know about these things but yeah it does happen and there's other guys waiting to be discovered the key what's going on here folks is people capture the narrative all right the narrative gets captured it gets sunk into people's brains ray Spruance commanded at Midway everybody knows that well everybody's wrong all right Nik Roger who I think he's at Oxford in England a history professor at Oxford either Oxford at Cambridge I forget which Nick Roger says this he says a problem is not that we don't know enough history the problem is we know too much and most of it's wrong questions I love this I live for this yeah Tom when he talks about the slot campaign Sabo Islands to who I think it's woke wits he's the Navy Astoria ok he wrote I think it was Jennifer on 6 ok is that the the newer destroyers that were they or had radar but they're put at the rear of the column because the Admirals didn't understand what ran who was responsible for that disposition yeah and is that McCain and his folks no no not McCain okay so we're yeah and yeah so so Fletcher is an overall command but in command of the invasion task force is Turner and in command of the screen force is a British naval officer all right and then that's then under him in command of the task group of the blue which is destroyer with the radar at Savile Island and then the and then the cruisers they're the senior guy of the cruiser commanders and I think it's the captain Chicago is the commander all right but he's actually under this and nobody knew how to use radar at that point effectively it was sort of this gee whiz thing and nobody expected the Japanese to do what they did which was as soon as they found out Guadalcanal had been invaded no radio circuits no radio traffic no Joe Roquefort right to intercept it because Rochefort's already been relieved and sent on to a better assignment commanding a floating dry dock all right I knew I'd get my floating dry docks in there alright and this is regarded as a movement up that a that a unrestricted naval officer unrestricted line naval officer would go on to command one of these strategic assets of which there are only four in the United States Navy at this so Rochefort is not there so Mikawa goes radio silent down the slot surprises everybody uses classic Japanese night tactics you know what are they doing it with they're doing it with eyeballs and searchlights all right and so so the enemy gets a vote you know sometimes the enemy gets a good one in you know Pearl Harbor you know they probably didn't deserve to do as well as they did there but certainly but but mikawa he screws up too he he sinks all these ships turns around and goes home he could have synced the entire half of the invasion fleet that was still there and then I think Fletcher would have really been roasted because then but but the surface warships were thought they were the protection everybody thought they would protect the transport fleet and the supply ship fleet that was still there only half of it was still there the rest of them had already offloaded and left all right and then Turner left the next day but nobody well the Marines do accuse Turner of leaving them high and dry but then once they get Fletcher they go all this guy's even better target okay because we got to work with Turner for the rest of the war but we don't have to work with Fletcher so we'll make Fletcher the fall guy and they do but the Marine Corps guy who's doing the analysis at the time for the Marine Corps in the Pacific and lundström talks about him he actually gives Fletcher the passage says Fletcher made the right strategic decision okay tactically and operationally you know he could have stayed but strategically he probably made the right decision because if the u.s. loses these aircraft carriers at this point in the war are we going to be able to maintain the Marines in Guadalcanal by the time we get to the end of October no aircraft carriers left okay they're all gone okay they're either damaged or on the bottom of the Pacific all right so it's it's a bloody campaign most of those carriers are stomach after Fletcher leaves fact all of them are sunk after Fletcher leaves enterprise's damaged Saratoga is damaged when he's on it so it's already damaged and then wasp and Hornet about Sun Hornets don't buy air attack and wasp is sunk by a submarine at torpedo Junction did I answer your question okay I probably answered a couple more - anything else yes ma'am again I just happen to be reading again Herman wokes the winds of war and war and remembrance and I don't know enough of the detail but several things you're mentioning sound familiar and ya know that's a wonderful book and again the guy they're following pug is the guy that he there's a wolf base that guy on sort of a composite of a couple guys right a composite of a couple guys but that the guy that they're they're really kind of looking at their I think is more of a the one of the two Admirals that gets killed at the night battle Guadalcanal which is Callahan and Scott Navy has losses two Admirals in the Guadalcanal campaign to get killed in one battle in one night all right and they die gloriously though and they they turn back to Japanese fleet enough so that the aviators can mop it up the next day but but yeah I think he does that I'd have to go back and read the pertinent sections to see whether what he brings into it about Fletcher I you know again I read that book you know or those books you know what I don't know yeah in the 70s like I was in college so and I wasn't a I wasn't one of these guys looking for people to bad-mouth Fletcher back now I'm attuned to it whenever anybody bad Mausam I challenge them and say well what about this what about this what about this you know and sometimes people win their arguments with me you know he could have done a better job refueling his destroyers off Guam well you can always do a better job you know could he have picked a better spot to refuel the man well I don't know you know do we know now we know things now that he didn't know that that's a big problem with with us folks we we're all post facto we have this sort of 20/20 hindsight particularly with the Pacific War where now we really kind of know where everybody was and what they were doing but the problem is they don't know well we didn't know how many Japanese submarines there really were the assumption was there's a lot of Japanese submarines in these waters there there was the assumption that hey when we invade Guadalcanal the Japanese are going to attack us with aircraft carriers well we've done a good job at Midway all right so the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet was trying to reconstitute itself we really picked kind of the right time to invade Guadalcanal the timing on it was superb and and the guy who should get credit for that Ernie King all right everybody told him he was crazy he goes well we own the Marines and so we can do it without your approval George Marshall and he did and Marshall Marshall was presented with a fait accompli all right it did suck resources from the European theater but we didn't have the amphibious lifts to do any invasions in the European theater beyond North Africa anyway so it wasn't that big of a deal all right yeah I've got a lot of arguments about the Pacific War versus the European war okay they were both important thank you for your service right okay what else well thanks much and I'll tell Frank Jack Fletcher that applause was for him thank you very much you you you

Channel: The Dole Institute of Politics

Views: 8,211

Rating: 4.7730498 out of 5

Keywords: Dole Institute of Politics, University of Kansas

Id: ltDL-JKO70E

Length: 96min 34sec (5794 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 12 2019