Joseph O. Fletcher

Joseph Otis Fletcher (May 16, 1920 – July 6, 2008) was an American Air Force pilot and polar explorer.

Biography
He was born outside of Ryegate, Montana on May 16, 1920 to Clarence Bert Fletcher (1884-1944). The family moved to Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl.

Fletcher started studying at the University of Oklahoma and then continued his studies in meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation, he entered the U.S. Army Air Corps and eventually became the deputy commanding officer of the 4th Weather Group, United States Air Force, stationed in Alaska.

He married Caroline Sisco Howard on October 15, 1949.

On March 19, 1952, his team landed with a C-47 aircraft, modified to have both wheels and skis, on a tabular iceberg in the Arctic Ocean and established a weather station there, which remained manned for 22 years before the iceberg broke up. The station was initially known just as "T-3", but soon renamed "Fletcher's Ice Island".

On May 3, 1952, pilot William P. Benedict and Fletcher as co-pilot flew that plane to the North Pole, becoming the first humans to land there and the first humans (together with scientist Albert P. Crary, who flew with them) to set foot on the exact geographical North Pole. (However, some sources credit this achievement instead to a Soviet Union expedition that landed there on 23 April 1948. )

Fletcher left the Air Force in 1963. In later years, he held various management positions in meteorological institutions, including a post as director of the NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR).

He received a doctorate from University of Alaska in 1979.

He retired in 1993. In 2005, he was awarded the honorary membership of the American Meteorological Society.

He died on July 6, 2008 in Sequim, Washington at age 88. He was buried in Resthaven Memorial Park in Shawnee, Oklahoma.