“There’s a lot going on around Washington,” he volunteered. “That fellow Billy Mitchell over in the Army Air Service makes a lot of trouble for me. But back in ’twenty-two at the Limitation of Arms Conference I set him back on his heels. He tried to take over the chairmanship of the session on aviation, and the first subject on the agenda was reparations. This country was scheduled to get one of the latest German Zeppelins, converted to a merchantman, and I didn’t intend to let the Army beat me to that punch.” He paused to glance at a silvery model of a rigid airship, standing on top of his cluttered desk.
“And so,” he went on, “when Mitchell breezed in with a secretary, all ready to take the chair, I inquired by what authority he pretended to assume the chairmanship. He mumbled something about rank. ‘Since when,’ I demanded, ‘does a one-star brigadier rate a two-star admiral?’ That stopped him, and the Navy got the Los Angeles.”
He moved close to me, tapping me on the forearm with his pipestem. “It isn’t just the old Army-Navy dogfight, though of course there is a lot of that in it. But these overzealous knights of the air actually believe that the airplane has already obsoleted the Navy. It isn’t their own idea but the nonsense preached by that Italian General Douhet in a book called Command of the Air. And on his say-so, these wild-eyed enthusiasts want to scrap the Army and Navy, on no other grounds than their personal opinions, unsupported by experience or fact.” He paused.
“And the old fogies over in Operations are no help to me, either,” he added. “They lay themselves wide open to Mitchell. If they had let me handle the publicity on the bombing off the Virginia Capes, I could have made a monkey out of him.” He began pacing the room.
“If the Navy doesn’t hurry and build up its own air force,” he rattled on, “it will be obsolete, just as Mitchell claims. Without an air force, the fleet would be a sitting duck. Mitchell knows that, and his game is to concentrate all aviation in a separate and independent air force under his command. With that setup he can emasculate naval aviation just like the British Air Ministry is doing in England. Meanwhile I am taking advantage of that to catch up with our own carriers. Give me a little time and we’ll leave them in the ruck.” A flush had crept up around his ears.
“So that’s why I had to create this Bureau—and why I had you ordered here. We’ve got a fight on our hands to keep Mitchell from sinking the Navy, and the country along with it.” He paused to cock his eye at me.
“Of course,” he said, “if you don’t like a nice knockdown, drag-out fight, I can send you back to General Service.”
My thoughts flashed back to my last night aboard the old Bridgeport, a Caribbean night beneath the stars when the crew had given me a farewell “happy hour.” Floodlights had glowed on the boxing ring, rigged on Number Three hatch. Brown-faced, white-shirted sailormen had looked up at the two gloved lads in boxing trunks whom the referee had called to the center of the ring for final instructions. And then as he had sent them back to their comers with a slap on each back he called after them, “Remember, now: break clean and come up fightin’. It’s anybody’s fight.”
CHAPTER TWO
The Power Plant, the Heart of an Airplane
Down on the second deck of the third wing, I looked through the doorway into a long room that housed my new billet, the Engine Section. Three flat-topped desks stood deployed as a line of skirmishers; two typewriter desks closed the blank files. At these desks secretaries had begun to tap out their daily stints of paper work. Around three of the peeled walls, battered tables sagged under a load of assorted aircraft-engine parts—dusty, oily, and, for the most part, heat-blackened examples of unfortunate mechanical failures, some of which, no doubt, had led to loss of life.