Mitscher, Marc Andrew.

Mitscher, Marc Andrew “Pete”, born 26-01-1887 in Hillsboro, Wisconsin. the son of Oscar and Myrta, born Shear, Mitscher. Mitscher’s grandfather, Andreas Mitscher (1821–1905), was a German immigrant from Traben-Trarbach. His other grandfather, Thomas J. Shear, was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly. During the western land boom of 1889, when Marc was two years old, his family resettled in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where his father, a federal Indian agent, later became that city’s second mayor. His uncle, Byron D. Shear, would also become mayor. While growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, he attended intermediate and high school there. In 1906, he received his appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. On 06-04-1917, he reported to USS Huntington for duty in connection with aircraft catapult experiments, which was followed by various assignments until February 1919 when he was transferred to the Aviation Section in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Later in 1919 Mitscher, then a lieutenant commander, piloted one of the three NC seaplanes that attempted the first airborne transatlantic crossing. Mitscher made the USS Saratoga’s first takeoff and landing on 11-01-1928 in a Vought UO-l. He left Saratoga in June 1929 to return to the USS Langley, the carrier on which he was assigned for a brief period in 1926. In July 1941 when he went to Norfolk,Virginia, for the duty in fitting out USS Hornet.

   The carrier was commissioned on 20-10-1941, and Captain Marc Mitscher became her first commanding officer. During World War II, the Hornet was the “Shangri-La” from which American planes, under the command of Army Lieutenant Colonel James “Jimmy” Doodlittle

  said, took off on 18-04-1942, to bomb military targets on the Japanese homeland. Aboard the Hornet, Mitscher led several successful attacks  against the enemy carrier forces. He was relieved of command of the Hornet

 in July 1942, three months before she was sunk in an air attack at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands.When Mitscher assumed command of Task Force 58 in 1944, the mighty Naval force opened the campaign to capture the Marshall Islands. Under Mitscher’s leadership and guided by his wisdom, Task Force 58 contributed directly to the capture and occupation of the Marshalls in February, 1944. In the days that followed, Mitscher led his task forces in attacks against heavily fortified Japanese bases. In the closing months of the war, Admiral Mitscher used many innovative tactics as he experimented with formations and manoeuvres, leading a series of attacks against the Japanese home forces. He returned to the U.S. as Deputy chief of Naval Operations on 10-07-1945, and was appointed to the rank of Admiral and assumed command of the Eighth Fleet on 01-03- 1946. He became Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet in September of 1946. After 41 years of continuous Naval service, Admiral Marc A.

Death and burial ground of Mitscher, Marc Andrew.

  Mitscher died of a heart attack on 03-02-1947, age 60. Admiral Arleigh Burke attributed Mitscher as being a “bulldog of a fighter, a strategist blessed with an uncanny ability to foresee his enemy’s next move. He was above all else, a Naval Aviator. “Mitscher is buried with his wife Francis, born Smaley,   who died old age 92, in 1982, on Arlington Cemetery, Section 2. Close by in Section 2, the graves of Major General, Commander 8^th Bomber Command Europe, Frederick Anderson, Rear Admiral, Commander Destroyer Greyson, Frederic Bell, Navy Admiral, “Operation Crossroads”, William Blandy, General, Commander 32^nd Infantry Division , Clovis Beyers, Navy Admiral. Battle of the Leyte Gulf, Robert Carney, Air Force General Lieutenant, Claire Chennault, Lieutenant General, Commander 4^th Corps, Italy Campaign, Willis Crittenberger, Major General and commander of the 5^th Infantry Division , Joseph Michael Cummins Brigadier General, First African-American General, Benjamin Davis,