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Joseph O. Fletcher, deputy commanding officer of the 4th Weather Group, United States Air Force, will address the first meeting of the Baltimore chapter of the ...
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On May 3, 1952, pilot [[William P. Benedict]] and Fletcher as co-pilot<ref>The original article in the ''[[The Polar Times]]'' stated that Fletcher was the pilot, but in the Fall/Winter 1997 issue of the ''[[Polar Times]]'', following a personal communication from Mr. Fletcher, a correction appeared stating that Benedict had been in charge of that flight. This is also confirmed by the interview Brian Shoemaker conducted with Fletcher in 1997 (link below).</ref> 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.<ref>[http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/resources/infosheets/21.html Concise chronology of approach to the poles], Scott Polar Research Institute</ref>)
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 Ocean and Atmosphere Research Labs (OAR). He retired in 1993. In 2005, he was awarded the honorary membership of the [[American Meteorological Society]].
He died in 2008 in [[Sequim, Washington]].
== References==
<references/>
==External links==
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