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.