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

Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Format is approximately 7.25 inches by 10.25 inches. xxii, [2], 658, [10] pages. List of Photographs. List of Maps. Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Special Terms. Task Organizations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. John B. Lundstrom, curator emeritus of History at the Milwaukee Public Museum has authored several books on the Pacific War, including Black Shoe Carrier Admiral and The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign. He is the recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature and the Admiral Arthur W. Radford Award by the National Aviation Museum. Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, is not a biography of Admiral Fletcher. It could best be described as an operational history of Fletcher's command from December 1941 through September 1942. It is also a spirited defense of an admiral who has been much maligned by historians of the Second World War in the Pacific. An abundance of new evidence demanded this reevaluation of Frank Jack Fletcher, the "black shoe" admiral who won his battles at sea but lost the war of public opinion. A surface ship officer in contrast to a "brown shoe" naval aviator--Fletcher led the carrier forces that won against all odds at Coral Sea, Midway, and the Eastern Solomons. These and other early carrier victories decided the Pacific War not only because they inflicted crippling losses but also because they denied Japan key strategic positions in the region. Despite these successes, by 1950 Fletcher had become one of the most controversial figures in U.S. naval history and portrayed as a timid bungler who failed to relieve Wake Island in December 1941 and who deliberately abandoned the Marines at Guadalcanal.