War in the Pacific
Naval historian Evan Mawdsley describes the war in the Pacific in 1944.
The Admirals Who Won the Central Pacific Battles
Raymond Spruance and Marc “Pete” Mitscher were the two admirals who led the decisive advance across the Central Pacific in the first six months of 1944. Admiral Spruance commanded the Central Pacific Force (later the Fifth Fleet) and Vice Admiral Mitscher, subordinate to Spruance, commanded the “fast carriers” of Task Force 58. The two men were near contemporaries, but they represented two different branches of the U.S. Navy and their careers had been very different. Spruance was a “black shoe” officer of the mainstream “battleship” navy, who had studied and taught at the Naval War College and served exclusively in surface gunnery ships – destroyers, cruisers, and battleships. Mitscher was in the “brown shoe” branch, one of the earliest aviation pioneers. He disdained battleships and what he regarded the backward-looking staff college. Although Spruance felt considerable doubts when Mitscher took over command of Task Force 58 under him, he was impressed by the carrier admiral’s conduct of operations in February 1944, during the invasion of the Marshall Islands and the raid on the Japanese base on Truk.
