“As chief of staff,” someone replied, “you’ve got to prevent the admiral making this mistake.” In the silence that followed I realized that on my first day in the Aircraft Squadrons we had already pointed up an issue between the Langley officers and the admiral’s flag. The fat was in the fire.
“As I understand my job,” I said, trying to choose the right words, “it is to help the Old Man carry out his program, not hinder him.”
After lunch they showed me the slow-motion movies of carrier landings; not the successful ones, but the crack-ups. These ranged from simple landing-gear collapses to rolling off the deck and over the side into the sea. As we broke up, Bobby Moulton came forward with that glint in his eye that characterized the peculiar brand of humor that permeates naval aviation.
“We’re qualifying the new class of carrier pilots next week,” he grinned. “You can get yours in before the admiral gets back. Meet me Monday morning down at the West Beach and we’ll put you over the jumps.”
Not too many pilots had qualified for deck landings back there in 1927. The Langley could make only twelve knots, and her deck was so narrow a pilot could not see it behind the engine. He could barely see the signalman out on his platform, and even with a good landing, failures of the airplane or the arresting gear could make him trouble. We used Vought UO’s with arresting hooks hung under their tails to catch the crosswires, and cross-axle hooks, long since abandoned, to catch the fore and aft wires.
Three of us constituted the next class. After three days of preliminary instruction on a simulated flight deck at Ream Field, primarily to familiarize us with the flag signals, we went aboard. On the way down the bay, a flock of sea gulls followed in our wake, beady eyes alight for possible garbage, and since they constituted a flight hazard, Emile Chourré, a veteran carrier pilot, perched aft on the signal platform to practice his antiaircraft marksmanship by working on the gulls with a BB gun.
Outside Point Loma the first pilot off—a youngster who had been as hot as a firecracker at Ream Field—went haywire, and after washing out his landing gear was ordered back to the air station where he made a safe belly landing in a shower of sand while surrounded by crash trucks, fire engines, and ambulances. My place was second in the line and, as I scrambled into the cockpit and looked down into the nettings where the whole ship’s company had assembled in the hope of seeing a brass hat roll over the side, I thanked my stars that the one thing I could do well with an airplane was to set it gently back on the ground. And so closely did I concentrate on the business in hand that I lost track of my landings and came to only when Tiny Sullivan, a 300-pound chief and an old friend, shook hands with himself as I jolted aboard for the tenth and final landing. Climbing from the cockpit I thumbed my nose at Bobby Moulton and waddled triumphantly toward the disappointed sailormen in the nettings.
While waiting for Admiral Reeves to return from Denver and his Navy Day speech, I familiarized myself with the local setup. The Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet, was a part of the battle-fleet organization whose backbone was a dozen battleships that based behind the breakwater ninety miles farther north at San Pedro or Long Beach, and exercised in the open sea nearby. Duty in the organization constituted “sea duty” but the aircraft squadrons were based on shore at the San Diego Air Station. Nominally assigned to the Langley for duty, Admiral Reeves and his small staff were given working quarters in a wing of the Administration Building. All save the admiral lived ashore, either in Coronado or San Diego; the admiral, during Mrs. Reeves’s absence in Switzerland, lived in a room off the corner office assigned to him. My office was next to his in the opposite corner of the wing. The air station, built to conform to local architecture, was surrounded by pleasant lawns and attractive plantings. It provided operating facilities and repair shops for FLEET AIR, and while under a separate command, had established a reputation for cheerful cooperation, a circumstance not often encountered in the naval establishment.
The admiral had built up his staff from among the personnel of his squadrons. His operations officer, Frank D. Wagner, more commonly known as “Honus,” had come up from Fighting One, the swank combat squadron with a reputation for high hat that one day gave it a replica of a top hat for its squadron insignia. Frank had dragged his feet on leaving Fighting One, but had brought to the staff a unique appreciation of the squadron point of view. Under Admiral Reeves’s watchful eye, he had conducted the tactical exercises of the summer concentration, and evolved some advanced tactical concepts for air combat. The admiral’s flag secretary was Seth Warner; his flag lieutenant, Les Arnold; and his radio officer, Gordon Rowe. I, as his chief of staff, would supervise the administrative functions and have general charge of matériel.
The aircraft squadrons themselves were in the process of organization. The twelve battle wagons at San Pedro operated three Voughts apiece, and since the battleships constituted three divisions, their aircraft formed three squadrons of the observation wing. There were no facilities at San Pedro for aircraft operations, so the observation wing based at San Diego except when needed aboard their ships for gunnery or the monthly fleet tactical exercises. During the summer months, when personnel shifts took place, all aircraft based at San Diego for the summer concentration period, where they broke in new crews and tried out new air tactics under Wagner.