Black shoe carrier admiral : Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal

Responsibility: John B. Lundstrom.
Imprint: Annapolis, Md. : Naval Institute Press, c2006.
Physical description: xxii, 638 p. : ill., maps ; 27 cm

At the library

SAL3 (off-campus storage)

Stacks Request

Items in Stacks
Call number	Note	Status
D767 .L86 2006		Available

Description

Creators/Contributors

Author/Creator: Lundstrom, John B.

Contents/Summary

Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (p. 607-618) and index.
Publisher's summary: Jack Fletcher *Proposes a new theory on radio intelligence which mitigates Fletcher's decisions *Based on an abundance of primary sources never before used An abundance of new evidence demanded this re-evaluation of Frank Jack Fletcher, the 'black shoe' admiral who won his battles at sea but lost the war of public opinion. A surface warrior (as opposed 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 was portrayed as a timid bungler who failed to relieve Wake Island in December 1941, and who deliberately abandoned the Marines at Guadalcanal. Fletcher once remarked that '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'. In this dramatic reappraisal of his career, Lundstrom explores the notion of Fletcher's 'groping around', and, drawing on new material, offers a fresh look at his decisions and actions. The first major reassessment in more than fifty years of this oft maligned naval officer, it provides a careful analysis of the effect of radio intelligence on decision-making in the carrier battles during the first nine months of the war in the Pacific. This new assessment is based on thousands of documents, despatch files and personal papers that no historian has previously employed. John B. Lundstrom is Curator Emeritus of History at the Milwaukee Public Museum, where he has worked since 1967. He is the author of five books, including The First Team and The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Supplemental links: Table of contents