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Fletcher was on or commander of 3 carriers that sank in action before being relieved by Nimitz after sinking of Wasp 15 September 1942:
1-Lexington(coral sea)
2-Yorktown (midway)
3-Wasp (submarine )

was he unlucky, or was he a bungler?

He was a bungler. Nimitz wanted to keep him, but King overruled him and had Fletcher pensioned off.

Poor old Wasp was idling along at 13kn in submarine infested waters and got torpedoed by Jap sub. Saratoga was also damaged in similiar circumstances. Both south-east of Guadalcanal.

Fletcher only launched half of his air planes at Midway. The extra SBDs in the first strike could have produced intersting results.... including preventing Japs from launching their strikes.

At Guadalcanal (7th Aug 1942) Fletcher was meant to stay a minimum of three days... but he left after only two. Citing enemy air activity as a reason to leave. He provided little CAP for the invasion. He stayed well east of Guadalcanal and few air attacks were directed at him. He was too far east to interfere with Jap cruiser TF that eventually fought at Battle of Savo. After Savo was fought, the allies had to scuttle two CA because they could not cover their withdrawal because Fletcher had just left. This resulted in four CA lost in that battle.

At Coral Sea, Fletcher didn't do too well either. I think there was some issue over who had the right to command the various ships on-site. Fletcher being the main muddler. It was quite lucky the Jap Ap TF turned for Rabaul, as the Allies were in no position to launch any additional attacks with Lexington fatally damaged (and through crew error, suffered the calamity of a sympathetic explosion). Yorktown too was badly damaged (even if only struck a couple of times). Only the surface TF under Crace could have interfered with Jap APs. But these had suffered some air attacks because Fletcher committed them too early and provided no LR-CAP. I think they were heading back to Australia - but they could have been ordered to turn around if Jap Aps were still headed for Port Morseby.

Fletcher usually takes the heat from people who want to blame bad things on allies rather than the enemy. Coral Sea -- one can as easily fault the CinCPac for having an ambiguous command structure. Loss of Lexington was a combination of IJN skill and bad US luck. A fellow evacuating a lower compartment left an exhuast fan running, when it was his duty to turn it off. The compartment filled with petrol vapor, and a spark did the rest. Very good luck on the part of the IJN not to lose Shokaku. A small shift in luck either way sees both Sho and Lex Sinking, or Sho sinking and Lex sailing away.

Despite the bad luck, Coral Sea was an Allied strategic victory (because Fletcher succeeded in forcing the IJN to withdraw). Possibly a tactical one as well. After the war the IJN air group commander from Sho said something like "If we can call Coral Sea a Japanese tactical victory, it was by the slimmest of margins." (See H.P. Willmott, the Barrier and the Javelin).

As to Guadalcanal and then Wasp. Fletcher withdrew from the Guadalcanal area primarily because of rumours of an IJN CVtf near the Sant Cruz Isl, and because he needed fuel for his DDs. You can't hang around SoPac area refueling when you know IJN subs were in the area. Indeed, Wasp was lost because Fletcher was ordered into waters known to be risky with subs.

So the evidence damning Fletcher is ambiguous.

Coral Sea: The US CV'S actually did send off full strikes against what was reported as CV's, but turned out to be CVL Shoho. Whether Fletcher was the one who ordered it or RAdm Fitch (who was OTC) is unclear.

Midway: Fletcher keeps the two TF separated. On the morning of the battle, he launches 10 SBD's to the north to cover his flank. When word comes of sighting of the IJN CV's, he waits 2 hours so that he can a) recover the search and b) be sure of the target. When he does launch, he holds back VS-5 as a reserve.

We can only speculate what could have been if VS-5 had launched as well. Would they have found Hiryu? She had been spotted, but who's to say that VS-5 wouldn't have attacked a nearby target? It is not high odds that she would have been hit too in that first attack. Of course with Hiryu knocked out, Yorktown goes untouched, and then back to the States for overhaul. She likely would not have been ready until October 42 the earliest, so, in my view VS-5 not launching does not affect the battle greatly.

Savo Island: Fletcher also states that his fighter strength is down 21% since the start of the operation.

Eastern Solomons: Fletcher's biggest mistake is that he sends Wasp away on a fueling rendezvous. According to Morison, this was done because Fletcher's latest intel said that there would be no action for a couple of days, so what better time to refuel.

As a side note, upon hearing a flash report of the action, Capt. Forrest P. Sherman Wasp is denied his request to return to the scene of the action. Could this have been RAdm Noyes, who was in charge of the Wasp TF?

Fletcher had 3 carriers torpedoed in TF's he commanded:

1. Saratoga on 11 Jan 42 500 miles sw of Oahu - out 6 months
2. Saratoga again on or about 1 Sept 42 150 miles east of Guadalcanal - out 2 months.
3. Wasp on 16 Sep 42 150 miles se of San Cristobal - sunk
   
   Fletcher was subsequently releived.
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   My opinion is that Fletcher wasn't outstanding, but certainly was a bad luck magnet. Was he a good commander? Well don't good commanders make their own luck?

Well don't good commanders make their own luck?

Sometimes they do. It's sort of the same way that players make their own luck in wargames. But it's hard to see what Fletcher could do about, for example, Saratoga's propensity to attract torpedoes. The alternative is not to deploy Saratoga. Hardly a winning strategy.

I agree with you. Fletcher was adequate and perhaps nothing more. Holding VS 5 in reserve looks like a bad choice given what we now know. Had another IJN CV appeared elsewhere or a combat or AP TF shown up near Midway, we might now be saying that it was good judgement to hold a strike force in reserve.

Originally posted by Admiral_Arctic

Poor old Wasp was idling along at 13kn in submarine infested waters and got torpedoed by Jap sub.

13 kn? Are you sure? She had just recovered aircraft.

Did Ol' Frank Jack have to face a Court of Inquiry for losing 3 carriers and damaging 3? (I'm counting Yorktown in both columns.) I never heard of one. No one has shown him as inept. And there are equal examples that he was as aggressive as he was careful.

It's hard to say, one could go either way.

I think Fletcher was a better strategist than a tactician.

I have to agree - Fletcher gets the short end of the stick for some things that either weren't his fault or seemed like good decisions at the time, in light of his orders, knowledge, and experience. The one thing I can really knock him for is leaving the First Marines on the hook at Guadalcanal, but even there it's debatable how much difference he could have made by staying.

Oddly enough, I think much the same can be said of Nagumo - but that's another thread.

Considering that FJ was commanding during the FIRST THREE carrier vs carrier battles (of basically 5 during the entire Pacific War) ever, and all were victories, I'd say he did incredibly well.

Frank gets the flak because he bailed on the MARINES at
Guadalcanal.

I think folks are nitpicking. The bottom line is that he won battles that could have very easily have gone in favor of the Japanese. That's pretty good IMHO.

The biggest thing he gets tagged for is "excessive refueling". At least twice (Wake in Dec 41 and Eastern Solomons Aug 42) he is criticized for fueling his ships.

The Wake Is. fiasco is also blamed on VAdm. Pye. Eastern Solomons could be laid at the door of wrong Intel.

I think Fletcher was a middle of the road Admiral.

Coral Sea was a strategic victory...in some ways, since it effectively prevented Zuikaku & Shokaku from showing up at Midway (would Nimitz have even risked 3 carriers at Midway if he'd known that the IJN was sailing with 6?), it was also a tactical victory.

His victory at Midway (admittedly in conjunction with Spruance) was brilliant. The loss of 1 carrier for 4 can only be judged as brilliant, concerns about withholding VS-12 aside.

The loss of Wasp was a bit of a blunder.

Really, the one blight on his record was retreating too quickly at Guadalcanal.

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One also has to take into account the time he worked in. Neither Japan or the US knew how to handle carrier vs. carrier engagements in 1942. Consider:

The two sides basically blundered into each other at Coral Sea.

The lightness of the Japanese screening force, CAP, and scouting aircraft at Midway were THE tactical blunder of the war (notwithstanding the strategic blunders committed prior to the start of the battle).

The Japanese committing their carriers piecemeal at several of the Solomons battles also hindered them.

Really, carrier tactics didn't reach their prime until much later in 1942, and early 1943.

Considering that Fletcher was working with a playbook full of empty pages on carrier vs. carrier tactics (nobody even thought such a thing would happen prior to the war), and pretty much helped write the book, I think he did a pretty reasonable job. Not great, certainly not in the class of Ray Spruance, but pretty commendable.

YMMV.

Actually, people had thought about it. Quite a bit. (The USN Fleet Exercises through the 1930's played a central role in the formation of doctrine in the prewar USN; the IJN and RN didn't ignore the problem, either.) Various navies came to very different conclusions. USN doctrine emphasized knocking holes in enemy flight decks, to be finished off at leisure; thus USN prewar carrier air groups were about half SBDs. IJN doctrine emphasized knocking holes in the sides of enemy carriers, sinking them quickly; and so their air groups had a much higher proportion of torpedo bombers. RN doctrine was unique in totally downplaying the role of the fighter for fleet defense, putting their trust instead in armored decks and heavy AA batteries. (The Illustrious class had truly awesome AA firepower. Too bad about the truly awful high angle fire control system they were saddled with.)

So to continue the analogy, it wasn't so much that the playbooks were full of empty pages; it was just that nobody really knew which of those plays, if any, would work.

Originally posted by CynicAl
So to continue the analogy, it wasn't so much that the playbooks were full of empty pages; it was just that nobody really knew which of those plays, if any, would work.

This may be a more apt description.

after playing both IJN and allies in many CV battles, I believe Fletcher's nerves were shot after Coral Sea. The same is true, as alluded to above, of Nagumo after Midway. They both knew that one wrong decision could mean complete destruction.