Marc Andrew "Pete" Mitscher was born on January 26, 1887, in Hillsborough (later Hillsboro), Wisconsin. He was the first son and second of three children of Oscar Mitscher and Myrta (Shear) Mitscher. His paternal grandfather had emigrated from Germany in the early 1850's; his mother was of English descent. Not long after Marc's birth the family moved to Oklahoma City, where the fatherran a general store and later served as mayor.
In 1900, appointed Indian agent for a remote reservation, Mitscher arranged for the boy to continue his schooling in Washington, D. C. , and in 1904 secured for him an appointment to the United States Naval Academy.
At Annapolis, where Mitscher acquired his nickname, "Pete, " Mitscher's career was less than distinguished. Forced to resign after two years for academic and disciplinary reasons, he was readmitted, and he graduated in 1910 near the bottom of his class. For the next five years, he served in a variety of junior officer billets in ships of the Pacific Fleet. Repeated requests for transfer to aviation duty finally bore fruit in 1915, when Mitscher was ordered to Pensacola for training. He completed the course in June 1916 and qualified as naval aviator no. 33. During World War I, Mitscher served successively as head of the aviation department on the cruiser Huntington and as commander of naval air stations on Long Island and at Miami. Somewhat taciturn and withdrawn, in part perhaps because of his early debacle at the Naval Academy, he nevertheless proved himself in these assignments a single-minded, efficient, and even-tempered officer. He was promoted to lieutenant commander in July 1918. In the years between the wars, Mitscher's career embraced all aspects of naval aviation. In May 1919, he piloted the flying boat NC-1 on its attempted transatlantic flight; and in 1933-1934, he directed the pioneering mass longrange flights of naval patrol planes from Norfolk to the Canal Zone and from San Diego to Hawaii. He was commanding officer of the seaplane tender Wright (1937 - 1938) and commander of Patrol Wing One (1938 - 1939). In 1922, he commenced the first of four tours of duty at the Bureau of Aeronautics, which involved him both in matters of design, training, and procurement and in the interservice and intraservice struggles of those years over the place of the air weapon in the military establishment.
He was promoted to captain in 1938; in 1941, after two years as assistant chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics in charge of aircraft procurement, he became the first commanding officer of the new carrier Hornet. Mitscher's period in command of the Hornet encompassed the launching of the Tokyo raid of B-25 army bombers commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James A. Doolittle and participation in the crucial battle of Midway, in which the ship's air group suffered heavy losses. Promoted to rear admiral, Mitscher spent the next year and a half in shore-based air commands, most notably at Guadalcanal, where his mixed force of army, navy, marine, and New Zealand aircraft supported the advance through the central Solomons, destroyed some seventeen ships and 470 enemy aircraft, and shot down the plane that carried Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, to his death. Early in 1944, Mitscher was placed in command of the Fast Carrier Task Force, Pacific Fleet.
With this force, which by war's end would number over a hundred ships and a thousand aircraft, he introduced a new era of naval warfare. Between January and April, as the amphibious forces advanced into Micronesia and along the New Guinea coast, Mitscher's carrier groups gained control of the central Pacific through destructive attacks on the Marshall Islands, the Japanese base at Truk, the Mariana Islands, and the Palau group. Renewed strikes on the Marianas in June cleared the way for the invasion of Saipan. In the battle of the Philippine Sea that followed, the destruction of some 475 enemy aircraft and, more importantly, of their pilots, effectively wrote an end to the career of the Japanese carrier striking force, which had dominated the early months of the war. Heavy attacks on Formosa, Luzon, and the Visayas in September and October inhibited Japanese air reinforcement of the Philippines and expedited the American return; and in the great battle for Leyte Gulf, which followed the American landings, Mitscher's force sank thirteen enemy ships, including four carriers and a battleship.
Through these ten months of almost continuous operations, Mitscher demonstrated marked skill and determination in the conduct of massed carrier operations against both shore-based air forces and fleet units, as well as a noteworthy solicitude for his pilots, as seen both in the development of submarine and seaplane rescue techniques and in his willingness to illuminate his ships to facilitate night recovery of pilots. A fighter with a marked preference for the offensive, more a doer than a thinker, Mitscher yet showed sure tactical instinct: off the Marianas in June his plan to force rather than to await battle, although vetoed by Admiral Spruance for understandable reasons, would in all probability have brought a still more crushing victory; at Leyte the battle plan prepared by his staff was in all respects superior to that implemented by Admiral Halsey. After a period devoted to leave and planning, Mitscher resumed command of the fast carrier force in early 1945. In February, his aircraft struck the Tokyo area in the first attack on the Japanese homeland launched by naval units since the Hornet raid three years before; in March, in anticipation of the invasion of Okinawa, they attacked airfields in southern Japan. There followed two and a half months of the most intensive sustained naval operations in history. In response to the Okinawa landing, the Japanese committed their remaining surface combatant strength against the American fleet, along with repeated mass kamikaze (suicide aircraft) attacks, which by mid-April had sunk twenty-four American ships, inflicted major damage on a hundred others, and reduced Mitscher's task groups from four to three. Before his relief on May 27, he was twice forced to change flagships as a result of damage inflicted by suicide planes. In June 1945, Mitscher assumed the post of Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air and soon found himself, as after the previous war, involved in political controversy over the organization of the defense establishment. Promoted to admiral in March 1946, he gladly left Washington to assume command of the Eighth Fleet and in September became Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet, the second naval aviator to hold a major fleet command. But the strain of so many months of sustained combat and the aftereffects of malaria contracted on Guadalcanal had taken their toll. Following a heart attack in January 1947, he was hospitalized at Norfolk, Virginia, where he died of a coronary thrombosis a week after his sixtieth birthday. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Between the World Wars, Mitscher was instrumental in the development of naval aviation, working on improving the technology, tactics and doctrine. He had a variety of assignments, including the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics and two of the first Aircraft Carriers. His most lasting contribution was the development of the fast carrier task force, changing the employment of aircraft carriers alone to combining fleets of aircraft carriers for a single operation. Two ships of the Navy have been named USS Mitscher in his honor: the post-World War II frigate, USS Mitscher (DL-2), later re-designated as the guided-missile destroyer (DDG-35), and the currently serving Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, USS Mitscher (DDG-57). The airfield and a street at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar (Naval Air Station Miramar) have also been named in his honor (Mitscher Field and Mitscher Way). Mitscher Hall at the United States Naval Academy houses chaplain offices, meetings rooms, and an auditorium. In 1989, Mitscher was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.
Mitscher was a quiet man. He rarely spoke, never engaged in small talk, and he would never discuss mission details at the mess table. On the rare occasions when he would enter into conversation it would be about fishing, a love of which he picked up in his middle years. Mitscher relaxed by reading inexpensive murder mysteries, and when at sea he would always have one with him. Though he appeared distant and severe to those that did not know him, in truth he held a deep affection for his men and was the possessor of a dry sense of humor. An example of his humor is displayed in his gentle ribbing of his chief-of-staff, Captain Arleigh Burke. Burke had come to Mitscher from destroyers, and it was well known that he preferred a fighting command over his new role as chief-of-staff. When a destroyer came alongside to refuel from the carrier, the admiral directed a Marine sentry nearby: "Secure Captain Burke, till that destroyer casts off. "
Quotes from others about the person
"Mitscher was a bulldog of a fighter, a strategist blessed with an uncanny ability to foresee his enemy’s next move, and above all else, a Naval Aviator. ” - Admiral Arleigh Burke
On January 16, 1913, Mitscher married Frances Smalley of Tacoma, Washington. They had no children.
