Admiral FRANK JACK FLETCHER

Notes & Articles:

The American public, trampled victim of the Great Depression of the previous years, blamed the 1914-1918 war for all their hardships. As economic conditions improved, the thought of staying out of world conflicts that were none of their business gained momentum among Americans. According to the British Ambassador, 90 percent rejected the idea of war at the beginning of 1940. History registered this attitude under the name of “Isolationism”. Japan, like Italy, and to some extent Germany, arrived late to the distribution of the world to colonial powers, but had began to put into practice the points of the “Tanaka Memoranda”. This was the plan that Prime Minister Baron Ichi Tanaka presented to the Emperor on July 25, 1927: 1st) Manchuria, 2nd) China, 3rd) bases in the Pacific and 4th) United States. President Roosevelt, very busy with the problems of his country in his first administration, started in January 1933, had hardly perceived with little more than a slight concern the advance of Nazism in Germany and militarism in Japan. The latter had already taken over the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931 and created there the puppet government of Manchukuo, with the indescribable Pu – Yi, former Chinese Emperor on the throne, and apart from the Chinese, nobody could have cared less. During his second term in office, Roosevelt found in 1937 that a Japanese attack on the harmless and defenseless Chinese Nation had resumed a war interrupted in 1932. That war included sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay on the river Yangtze, later apologizing and claiming that it had only been a regrettable mistake. Much more concerning for Roosevelt was the way the actions of the Nazis in Europe was rapidly unfolding. His concern was shared by his closest collaborators. These actions, starting with the occupation of Saar, with the annexation of Austria, and under the Munich Pact, the Czechoslovakian region of Sudetenland. And further with the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia, now without the patronage of any treaty; the unilateral guarantee to Poland by France and Great Britain; the Hitler – Stalin Non Aggression Pact; the German invasion of Poland; the order to Germany, under threat of war, to stop its armies and be ready to retreat in a two hour period, issued by Great Britain at 0900 on September 3rd and after all these events, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s dreary address to the Kingdom:
"I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10, Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 1100 that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different I could have done and that would have been more successful. Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland, but Hitler would not have it. He had evidently made up his mind to attack Poland whatever happened; and although he now says he has put forward reasonable proposals which were rejected by the Poles, that is not a true statement. The proposals were never shown to the Poles nor to us; and although they were announced in a German broadcast on Thursday night, Hitler did not wait to make comment on them, but ordered his troops to cross the Polish frontier. His actions show convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force. We and France are today, in fulfillment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack on her people. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given to Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe has become intolerable. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will play your part with calmness and courage. Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against – brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution – and against them I am certain that the right will prevail." (Andrés Lazarús del Castillo. “The Days of Fletcher”).

The Second World War, the biggest tragedy in history, had officially started.

Winston S. Churchill, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, would say that day, “In this solemn hour it is a consolation to recall and to dwell our repeated efforts for peace. All have been ill-started, but all have been, faithful and sincere. Outside, the storms of war may blow  and the lands may be lashed with the fury of its gales, but in our hearts this Sunday morning there is peace. Our hands may be active, but our consciences are at rest”.

Morison took away from Fletcher the credit for the victory and gave it arbitrarily to Spruance... everyone believed him... Spruance was a great admiral, but could not prove it at Midway because his ignorance about aircraft carrier wouldn't not allow it... and it didn't.

1)  Let’s see again how easy it was for Morison to twist the facts:

Admiral Spruance’s Task Force built around Enterprise and Hornet, departed Pearl 28 May "to hold Midway and inflict maximum damage on the enemy by strong attrition tactics". Admiral Fletcher’s Yorktown force sortie at 0900 on the 30th, with orders ‘to conduct target practice and then support T. Force 16. It is inaccurate to connect the first order – which was for all and addressed to the commander of the ‘Carrier Striking Force’ (Fletcher) – with Spruance and a second one, that does not appear in ‘Operation Plan 29-42’ with Fletcher. With this Morison again spins the wrong idea that Fletcher was sort of an “assistant” to Spruance. The worst part is that these manipulations went to the Official History records and everyone believed him and many copied him. America owes Morison the destruction of a hero and not having put to good use the great lessons in strategy, leadership and decency given by Fletcher…
… Morison says: “As he possessed no aviation staff and Spruance had Halsey’s, it was probably fortunate that Spruance exercised practically an independent command during the crucial actions of 4-6 June”.
We strongly disagree. Morison did not understand or did not want to understand the battle of Midway, and that ended up damaging Fletcher. As we have seen there was no independent command in that battle. He does not explain or perhaps he never understood that the “aviation staff” can only be useful during the tactical operation and they are not prepared for a strategic command. It was Halsey’s staff and Halsey was a tactician, “attack, attack, and attack again”. The flyers are usually tacticians by nature, their thoughts are on the immediate, then now. Morison also omits to say that TF16 aviation staff couldn’t avoid the blunders they made at Midway like the ones we have described before or that Fletcher’s was the only one to have won a battle of carriers. This quote of him and the following one only reinforce the false idea that the fleet commander at Midway was Spruance and not Fletcher. He fails to see Spruance’s clear dependency on Fletcher, who assigned missions and means in militarily structured situations. He fails to analyze who was in charge of the strategic management or compare the tactical performances of the TF.

“Fletcher did well, but Spruance’s performance was superb. (WHAT??). Calm, collected, decisive, yet receptive to advice; keeping in his mind the picture of widely disparate forces, yet boldly seizing every opening, Raymond A. Spruance emerged from this battle one of the greatest admirals in American naval history”. (Samuel Morison).

The “professor” doesn’t seem to have read anything about the battle or not to have a notion about what a command is. Notice how he credits the victory to Spruance through an enumeration of his qualities.
“Battles are not won with good qualities but with good decisions and at Midway the important decisions were Fletcher’s”. Perhaps someone could do it for him and show us how not to see Fletcher’s performance at Midway and seal it with a ridiculous “Fletcher did well”. Maybe someone could walk us through Spruance’s ‘notable events’ in that battle, whose personality was so praised. Spruance, Mitscher and officers of TF16’s staff were notable people. But Waldron found the enemy by his intuition, McCluskey because he made a nearly crazy decision. As if this wasn’t enough, Ring’s dive bombers (part of Spruance’s task force) never arrived on target, an enemy carrier got away, and then Yorktown was lost. SPRUANCE RECOGNIZED THIS IN HIS BATTLE REPORT.
In contrast with all that, TF17 flyers arrived to the target all in a group as well as could be expected. They arrived at the same time as those from TF16, having left more than an hour and a half later. Without considering that Fletcher also diagramed and controlled all the battle, taking charge of such banalities like reserve, scouting, choice of targets, allocation of resources and other similar foolish things. But, should it not be said that Fletcher had a “superb performance” he “calm, collected, decisive, yet receptive to advice; keeping in his mind the picture of widely disparate forces, yet boldly seizing every opening”, Yet, he of course didn’t “emerge from this battle one of the greatest admirals in American naval history”. No, Fletcher didn’t: “Fletcher did well”.

2) “… beyond the exaggerations and changes spawned by the Hollywood machinery, reality might be deformed in a movie, involuntarily perhaps, by means of the most innocent resources.

If we give Spruance’s part to well-known and strong-character actor like Glenn Ford and Fletcher’s to a weaker and less famous actor like Robert Webber, the audience will surely buy the idea of a genius Spruance and a tortured Fletcher, whose presence in the place was an accident.

If in addition we invent a crowded meeting where Spruance-Ford is the one who decides the position of the American Fleet for the battle and afterwards we say to Fletcher-Webber that, as he’s the senior, he will have the overall command when they get together, then it all adds up. And if, just in case, we put mega-star Charlton Heston to play a hybrid role and acting half the film as a kind of Layton and  in the other half, as an oracle of knowledge next to edgy Fletcher-Webber who didn’t even know his name, then we must say…bias at its best. In the most important decision of the battle, that of 0607, Fletcher isn’t shown but Browning, who was too important to be receiving the message from Fletcher, is, with Admiral Spruance at his side.

Again the hero is Spruance-Ford, who extols Nimitz-Fonda who, given the actor’s dimension, doesn’t need it. Didn’t they forget something…like the whole issue of such a big decision? The tremendous order remains hidden and Fletcher is never seen giving Spruance any. He only reports, like a submissive subordinate to his boss, the information he receives, as if Spruance was the decision maker. In the order of 0838, the film makes a confussion betwwen 0838 (z-12) and 0839 (z-10), and the launching of Yorktown’s attack seems to be authomatic, not strategic.

The reality was that choosing opportunity of launching this attack, Fletcher showed to the world un incredible management of intuition and timing. If when, because of the attack on Yorktown, Fletcher-Webber transfers to nowhere because he never appears on screen again and the one who arrives to port as the victor and is met by Nimitz-Fonda and Rochefort-Holbrock is the great Ray Spruance, then the “defletcherization” is complete. The biggest harm that this fairly decent movie does to history is that it conveys the very untrue idea of Fletcher as a disposable object, one you can get rid of with no pain nor glory. Quite a symbol.“

And this is a minimal part of what the author has to say based on serious chronicles, like the Battle of Midway’s official reports, that are open to the public but many authors don’t seem to have read.  

AdmiralFletcherVictories.com

Contact Dr. Andrés Lazarús del Castillo, from HERE