company with the _Omaha_ leading the way on our epoch-making wide
southerly detour. And as the _Big Sara’s_ decks trembled under the
thrust of her great screws, we on COMAIRONS’ staff began to feel a
tremor around our hearts. Looking back into the vessel’s boiling wake
we could see the churnings of white water as the vast power of her
great motors drove her forward; a portion of the energy went into
slip, but by far the largest part of it went into effective forward
thrust. In that turbulence we could visualize what went on quite
unseen in the slipstream of aviation, that remorseless force which
was driving us at such breathtaking speed.
From our lofty perch on the flag bridge we could count sixty-six
airplanes trembling there in the breeze that swept across the
deck straining them against their lashings and wheel chocks. Out
in front stood thirty-six Boeing fighters with air-cooled radial
engines, airplanes we had not dreamed about five years earlier when
I had sat in the anteroom off Admiral Moffett’s office in BUAERO.
Behind the fighters ranged twelve Vought Corsair scouts, conceived
and constructed by Chance Vought, who had written the prescription
for the Pratt and Whitney Wasp. Back on the fantail, their biplane
wings folded, nested eighteen Martin T4M torpedo-bomber scouts,
three-seaters built around the Pratt and Whitney Hornet, an engine
that even George Mead, who had created it, had solemnly stated in
writing was “quite impossible.”
As the crews milled about on deck, checking a cockpit cover here or a
lashing there, the squadron commanders supervised their work. There
was cagey old “Skinny” Wick, skipper of Fighting One, the squadron
that wore the high hat insignia on its fuselages. Commanding the
other fighter squadron was brilliant Art Davis. The celebrated Three
Sea Hawks, with Art as their new leader, comprised the first section
of this command but the entire outfit could now match the leading
section in smooth squadron acrobatics. In command of our scout-bomber
squadron we had that rough and ready old-timer, “Squash” Griffen.
At the head of our heavy bomber outfit rode the Old Man of the Sea
himself, Harry Bogusch, of whom Admiral Reeves had said, “That man
is so crazy about flying you’ll have to shoot him down to get the
squadron out of the sky.”
As we sped toward the equator, we speculated on our chances of
success. Frank Wagner, appreciating the intelligence of some of the
smart aviators on the _Lexington_, feared that, having trained under
us and learned our mental processes, they might diagnose our play. If
they should take their suspicions to Captain King, and he should pass
them on to the “blue” C.I.C. along with a suggestion that he deploy
the defending aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Panama to scout for
_Big Sara_, the _Lex_ could intercept us during our daylight run and
strafe our planes on deck.
This fear the admiral discounted. While he had great respect for
Admiral King’s intelligence and counted him an ambitious leader
who had carefully schooled himself in all branches with a view to
ultimate command of the fleet in case of war, he rated King a hard
driver, one unlikely to invite initiative from his subordinates. To
be a good driver you had to know more about your job than anyone else
and be on it every minute. This tended to develop fear among your
juniors and discourage their enthusiasm for making suggestions.
The most important factor in a campaign, according to the admiral,
was a knowledge of the military character of one’s opponent. One
should not discount his abilities, nor should he overestimate them.
War is no exact science and not therefore subject to rational
analysis like, say, engineering. War itself is irrational and the
conduct of a battle is always a tragedy of errors. One must be
prepared to take risks but these must be intelligent risks—where the
advantage to be gained is commensurate with the hazards involved.
Fighting spirit is a major factor. One must know the weapons and have
faith in their efficacy. The admiral thought that King, for all his
tour of duty in aviation, was still a battleship man. He doubted if
King had real sympathy or enthusiasm for aviation.
“I recall that you used to box at the Academy,” he said, looking at
me, “and you remember the old instructor there, ‘Matchew’ Strohm—he
of the cauliflower ears, the flattened nose, and the Bowery dialect.
‘Matchew’ used to say, ‘If yer feelin’ sick to yer stummick, remember
maybe de udder guy is feelin’ a leetle sicker. It ain’t de headwork,
but de last leetle poosh, dat wins de fight!’”
We were now committed to action. We had perfected our technique. From
here on out, we’d play it by ear!
Sitting there in the admiral’s cabin, yarning around the
green-baize-covered table, I became suddenly aware of how far we had
traveled in the brief span of twenty years. Two decades earlier, back
there in Annapolis, I had been one of a couple of hundred midshipmen
facing an uncertain future. Britannia’s rule of the waves had brought
peace and prosperity to a world from which tyranny had all but
disappeared. The Navy had lapsed into innocuous desuetude, after a
brief flurry in the Spanish American War, and now offered but little
hope of early promotion. Admiral Reeves, then but a lieutenant and an
oldish one at that, had taught us “skinny”—physics, electricity, and
chemistry. Rated “white” by the midshipmen and known for valor on the
football field, he had threatened to grow old in the service with no
chance to display his talents.
Today he was the commander of a naval force, totally undreamed of
two years earlier, a product of his own conception and creation. And
he was discoursing to us on matters of tactics, strategy, military
policy, and leadership in terms we could not have comprehended much
earlier. I had gone to Annapolis, not for any love of the sea, but
because I had thought to save my father the expense of a college
training which, at the time, he could ill afford. And chance had
thrown me in with men like Dr. Lucke, a leader in the creation of
the American technology, Admiral Moffett, a leader who had applied
it to aviation, and Admiral Reeves, a leader who had conceived a new
philosophy for the naval air force.
The morning we sighted the low volcanic cones of the mysterious
Galápagos Islands, I recalled the day precisely twenty years earlier
when I had helped reconnoiter this little-known archipelago while
a midshipman in the armored cruiser _Colorado_. At the time such
a thing as a gasoline engine was quite unheard of in the fleet.
I had therefore sailed a whale boat into Post Office Bay and had
sought out the barrel in which, it was said, whalers were wont to
leave their letters for later transmission to their destination by
whomever chanced to pass that way. In order to commemorate the day
and emphasize the breathtaking progress of engines, I suggested to
the admiral that I might take off in a fighter and touch wheels
ashore. The admiral smilingly agreed but as we closed the islands,
intermittent squalls and areas of low visibility forced us to cancel
the project.
This unsettled weather continued until the evening before the night
run to Panama. We had run all day at 30 knots, with a section of
fighters on the take-off spot, ready to launch the moment the weather
cleared. The _Omaha_ had reported running short of fuel, giving
us a new worry. Unless she could last the route at full speed, we
would have to launch without a plane guard. Cruising along from
one squall to the next, elated by the luck that had protected us
against prowling _Lexington_ scouts, we suddenly broke out into the
clear in an area of unlimited ceiling and visibility. It was about 5
P.M. when the fighters roared into the air.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Frigate Birds
Up until this moment, everything done had been in rehearsal. Now,
with the possibility of enemy contact at any instant, the flag bridge
took on a new atmosphere of high tension. The admiral stood out on
the bridge, binoculars glued to his eyes, while the breeze fingered
his beard. Frank Wagner hovered beside him, alert for a suggestion
or command, a quizzical expression in his eyes, indicative of his
humorous reaction to stress. As we followed the tiny fighters racing
directly ahead along our course, we were startled by a quick reversal
that brought them racing back to the carrier.
At that time, fighters carried no radio. They zoomed across the bow
at low altitude to drop short sections of garden hose as message
holders. The fighters had sighted a destroyer dead ahead, an enemy
scout, the _Breck_, heading for us on a collision course. Even as we
read the message, we made out the ship’s mast, dead ahead. We’d been
caught.
The _Breck_ turned to parallel our course, well out of gun range, and
seemed to be looking us over. The flag-chief quartermaster, gazing at
her through his long glass, turned to the admiral.
“Sir,” he remarked, “it looks funny to me. I wonder if he thinks
maybe he’s sighted the _Lexington_.” The admiral lowered his
binoculars and turned to me.
“Well,” he asked, “what do you want to do with her?” Now, the lack
of a plane-guard vessel for the next morning had lain heavily on my
mind. We had enough worries without risking a take-off crack-up and a
lost pilot. It must have been this that prompted my facetious reply.
“Tell her to plane-guard us, sir!” I laughed.
Quick as a flash the admiral barked the signal to the flag-chief
quartermaster. As the bright flags fluttered in the late afternoon
light, the _Breck_ answered. Then to our amazement, she turned and
swung into position directly astern of us, four hundred yards away.
There we might have left her save that Ken Whiting, the official
umpire, felt obliged to make a ruling. And so we theoretically opened
fire on her with the after ten-inch, and theoretically sank her.
Ken signaled the _Breck_ that she was now disabled without radio to
communicate our position.
We were just congratulating ourselves on this break and sweating out
the rest of the daylight, when the _Omaha_ reported being attacked by
the cruiser _Detroit_. Her captain, Dick White, who had once been my
skipper on the destroyer tender _Bridgeport_ and was an old friend
of Admiral Reeves, had doped out our intentions, and disregarding
his orders, had left his scouting station to look for us. Even then
he was broadcasting our position in plain English, instead of code,
begging the _Lexington_ to come and get us.
Ken Whiting now ruled both cruisers out of the action. The _Omaha_,
already short of fuel, slowed down, but the _Detroit_, calmly taking
up the plane-guard station, began a play-by-play account of _Big
Sara’s_ every move. Well, the fat was in the fire now; Captain Dick
knew we needed a plane guard too badly to wave him off, and besides,
he knew Bull Reeves too well to worry about any future disciplining.
The tropic night fell on the Gulf of Panama, coming down suddenly at
five bells of the first dog watch. All night we steamed at thirty
knots with the stars closed in around our darkened decks. At midnight
the admiral called me to the flag bridge.
“All the squadron commanders have been up in a body to ask me to
launch immediately and not wait for dawn. What do you say?” That was
a poser. No doubt, sweating it out down in the ready room, fearful
that Army or Navy aircraft might catch them flat-footed on deck
during the night, they had come up with their big idea.
“Sir,” I replied, finally, “we have no reason to believe that any
night fighters or bombers can be out this far. At least we haven’t
seen or heard any signs. To change a plan involves new risks, and we
have enough already.”
“You’re right,” the admiral agreed. “I’ll tell them to turn in; we’ll
stick to the original plan.”
Standing on the flag bridge with the seas slapping against the side
and the night breeze filtering down our necks, I began to appreciate,
for the first time, the kind of courage that was being displayed by
this man. A half-dozen rivals, candidates for his job, were sitting
back, waiting for a break. It was the old Navy Game, keep your neck
in and let the other fellow take the risks. Sooner or later it pays
off—if you live long enough. Bull Reeves had never played that game.
“Sir,” I began, “there’s a lot of brass hats watching us tonight.”
The admiral inclined his head to hear me above the roar of the wind.
“And,” I went on, “there’d be many a dry eye tomorrow if you should
slip.” For a while I thought he hadn’t heard.
“I know,” he replied slowly, “but a commander who stops to appraise
the impact of a military decision upon his personal fortunes has no
right to be entrusted with a command.”
After a while, dark figures began stirring among the parked
airplanes, and the blue lights winked on—flashlights screened by
paper torn from packages of absorbent cotton, loaned by the sick bay.
Still later, the staccato bark of an engine and red flashes from its
short exhaust stacks signaled all mechanics to start their engines.
By now the night air was cold and we shivered as we stood around on
the bridge, looking down on an expanse of exhaust flames. Ship’s
officers had taken their stations, their telephone helmets on their
heads. Pete Mitscher and Ken Whiting stood in the wings of the
bridge. The roar of engines swelled then ceased as suddenly as it had
started.
Without hearing the order, we knew what that meant: “Pilots, man
your planes.” The radio messenger handed me a signal blank. It was a
plain-English broadcast from the enemy cruiser _Detroit_. Dick White
was on the air, in his play-by-play account.
“_Saratoga_ has started all aircraft engines,” it began. “What a
sight! A thousand tongues of red fire from their exhausts! I have
turned on searchlights and am firing pyrotechnics to indicate
present position. Can’t someone stop this? It would be a pity, but
we can’t let them get away with this kind of murder.”
Over the bow roared Skinny Wick in the first airplane, her running
lights on. She turned toward Panama. Now they were getting off at
about ten-second intervals. They were rendezvousing on the course to
the Canal. Eighteen had joined up. Off went their lights! They were
going in darkened.
Now a second group had joined up and turned out its lights. There
went the torpedo planes. They were forming in two nine-plane groups.
One eighteen-plane fighter squadron would escort each nine-plane
bomber division. Now they’d all disappeared. There came the last
group, twelve in all—Griffen’s dive bombers. Now they were all
gone. The signalman handed me an intercept from Dick White. “It’s
magnificent. I’ve never seen such precision. It’s breathtaking.” With
that he signed off.
Each of the fighters was a potential 500-pound dive bomber and
if unopposed would dive immediately onto the locks. Afterward he
would climb back to his station and protect the heavy bombers on
their level-bombing run. Even the two-seaters were potential dive
bombers, and if unopposed would also go in to bomb. Thus we had
three detachments, timing their approaches so as to appear over
the defending observation posts simultaneously in order to throw
the defenses into confusion. After the bombers had delivered their
attacks and started back to the _Big Sara_, the fighter pilots would
remain behind to harass the Army pursuit. With their air-cooled
fighters they could sit on top of the Army liquid-cooled jobs, watch
them climb below in a futile effort to gain altitude, and finally
thumb their noses, as the enemy lost flying speed and spun out of
control.
On the _Saratoga_ we sweated out the hour-long minutes of the
approach. Radio silence was broken when Bogusch and Griffen reported
success. We sweated out their return; the run would take all the
available fuel. When they started coming aboard we were too busy to
exult. Every plane got in safely except Les Arnold’s F3B. Les, our
flag lieutenant, was right over the deck with a few seconds to go
before the “cut,” when his engine conked, out of gas. He landed
smoothly in the sea. We left him to the mercies of a convenient enemy
destroyer we had called in to act as plane guard, and started out to
sea.
But too late! For now we found ourselves under the guns of the
defending battleships. It seems that Admiral Pratt in our battleship
divisions had failed to come up in time to support us. The navigator
of the flagship had underestimated the strong current off Cape Mala
and the _Saratoga’s_ screen was nowhere in sight. Every phase of the
complex air operation had gone off like clockwork. All our squadrons
had reached their objectives unopposed just at dawn, and had caught
the defenders on the ground. With the exception of Les Arnold’s
plane, which had now been recovered with only a ducking for Les, we
had no casualties of any kind. Only the mighty battle wagons had
missed the boat!
The critique that year was brief. Admiral Pratt took the floor.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “you have witnessed the most brilliantly
conceived and most effectively executed naval operation in our
history. I expect to fly my flag in the _Saratoga_ on our return
cruise north, partly as a badge of distinction but mostly because I
want to know what makes the aircraft squadrons tick.”
Nearly twenty years after the dawn attack on Panama, I met Gen. J. B.
Mitchell, USA, Retired, the officer who had then commanded the Panama
defenses. The general told me that, having gone abroad early that
morning in company with his adjutant, long before the alarm had been
sounded, he had sighted specks against the sky.
“Frigate birds?” his adjutant had inquired.
“Frigate birds, my eye!” the general had retorted. “Those are enemy
aircraft and they’ve caught us flat-footed.”
Our own high-rankers, while appreciating the tactical skill Bull
Reeves had shown, had entirely missed the implications of his
accomplishment. While the Army Air Service had been talking air
power, the Navy had created the first American strategic air force,
not one riveted to shore bases but one roving the high seas—on the
backs of the fleet! Yet if this revolutionary development was lost
upon most Americans, it was not lost upon our potential enemies, the
Japanese.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Another Turning
Admiral Moffett did not miss the opportunity, afforded him by the
_Saratoga’s_ performance, to press for his reappointment as Chief of
the Bureau of Aeronautics. He countered front office maneuvers in the
Navy Department through adroit handling of the political angle at
which he was past master. Someone on the Naval Affairs Committee let
the Secretary know that the admiral’s reappointment for a third term
was favored by that committee; then someone on the Appropriations
Committee inquired when his nomination might be expected—and lo, the
whole house of cards collapsed.
The performance of the _Saratoga’s_ planes created a front-page
sensation; _The New York Times_ handled the story exceptionally.
Hanson Baldwin, himself a Naval Academy man steeped in the Mahan
tradition, was on the scene, and went out with us on several
demonstrations arranged for fleet officers and distinguished
visitors. Charles A. Lindbergh, then at Panama in connection with Pan
American Airways’ first mail hop from Panama to Miami, spent several
days on board the _Saratoga_.
Instead of quartering him in the admiral’s cabin, we berthed him down
in the wardroom with the squadron pilots and passed the word around
that he should be treated like any other visiting Army file. However,
since his first act had been to request permission to take off and
land on the ship, and further, since approval of his request might
convey the impression that there was no mystery attached to being a
naval aviator—especially a carrier pilot—I was designated to chaperon
him during flight operations and diplomatically to fend him off.
We were standing together on the bridge of the _Saratoga_, watching
the evolutions on deck. The very precision of the landings and
take-offs was a delight, and the smooth teamwork of the deck
crews was breathtaking, even to those who had grown up with the
development. Lindbergh, enthusiastic as a kid with a toy airplane,
kept up a running fire of questions as to the whys and wherefores
of everything. He was particularly curious about the air tactics,
and kept Wagner and the admiral busy answering searching questions.
Lindbergh’s eyes gleamed and his boyish grin widened as the admiral
held forth as only he could do.
It was after the operations had been concluded and we were heading
back to port that Lindbergh popped the question that was uppermost in
his mind.
“Why won’t you let me land on board?” he asked abruptly.
“Admiral Wiley is reluctant to accept responsibility for your
safety,” I replied.
“I’m responsible for myself,” he retorted brusquely. “Isn’t it a fact
that they just don’t want an Army officer around a carrier?” he added.
“Of course,” I replied. And then I moved on to the counterplan. “You
remember the Three Sea Hawks at the Los Angeles air races last year?”
I inquired.
Naturally Lindbergh remembered.
“Well,” I went on, “Tommy Tomlinson has left the service, but Put
Storrs and Bill Davis are here, and the boys thought you might like
to lead them in a Section take-off, and fly ashore with them when you
go.”
Lindbergh nodded. “I’d like that,” he said simply.
“It would make a good story,” I went on. “‘Leader of Three Musketeers
takes off with Three Sea Hawks.’” Lindbergh shook his head.
“Not interested in the publicity,” he said.
And there, thought I, was a key to his conduct. Lindbergh was so
honest, intellectually and in every other way, that the antics of
publicity seekers revolted him. Newspaper men, having never before
encountered a celebrity who was not avid for publicity, could not be
expected to understand this. They made—and broke—celebrities at will.
They considered that they had made Lindbergh and most now thought him
ungrateful.
With Admiral Moffett’s reappointment to the Bureau, we became curious
as to Admiral Reeves’s new assignment. He had made it a practice
never to request duty for himself, and now rather hoped he might get
command of the Ninth Naval District, at Great Lakes. But when the
news leaked out through the grapevine, it was a dive-bomb hit right
amidships. Admiral Reeves was to go to the Navy Yard at Mare Island
as Inspector, a job that usually rated a commander or, at most, a
captain. The admiral took the news cheerfully as usual.
However, this was but a preliminary “strafing attack,” the name the
admiral had coined for diving tactics. One day Wagner walked into
the admiral’s cabin, his face as long as the _Saratoga’s_ flight
deck. Waving a letter in his hand he sank down in his seat at the
mess table and announced, with a wry grin, “They’re shanghaiing me to
Guam!” At first we thought he was simply using the slang phrase, but
it turned out to be literally true.
“And as for you,” he added, nodding to me with a sudden grin that
always signaled the triumph of his humor, “you’re headed for Coco
Solo.”
Coco Solo, the big new base on the Atlantic side of the Canal, would
have been most acceptable as a command following a full three years’
sea cruise, but I had been but a year afloat and was already on the
short side of sea duty. The assignment, had it been carried out,
would have been a sentence to oblivion. Admiral Reeves later saw
that it wasn’t. For when the new Commander in Chief, Battle Fleet,
who relieved Admiral Pratt, proved to be Adm. Louis M. Nulton, a
friend of Admiral Reeves, the latter promptly dispatched a letter to
Admiral Nulton suggesting that he ask for me as his Aide for Aviation
on the Battle Fleet Staff. This assignment put me one notch above
the Aircraft Squadrons, whose new commander was announced as Admiral
Butler, with Ken Whiting in my job as Chief of Staff. And since
Admiral Nulton was known as a man for detail, the Aircraft Squadrons
Staff saw that they would need a friend on high if they were to
retain the freedom of action Admiral Pratt had always given Admiral
Reeves.