Alfred Melville Pride, a retired four-star admiral and a former commander of the 7th Fleet in the Pacific, has died of cardiac arrest.
Pride, who was also a former chief of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics and a former commander of naval air forces in the Pacific, died at his sister's home on Saturday. He was 91.During World War II he was commanding officer of the light aircraft carrier Belleau Wood, and in that capacity directed air strikes against Japanese positions in the Gilbert, Marshall, Caroline and Mariana islands in 1943 and 1944.
He was a member of the original crew of the Navy's first aircraft carrier, the Langley, a converted collier, and in October 1922 was one of a small group of test pilots who made experimental landings and takeoffs on the ship's flight deck.