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.