CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Salt’s Solution
When, next morning, I buckled on my dress sword and reported at the Naval Air Station, I found Admiral Reeves had gone to Denver to make a speech at the Navy Day celebration there. Then, since Captain Towers was senior officer present afloat, I walked down the _Langley_ dock to pay my respects to him. The moment I stepped over the rail onto the steel-decked passageway leading aft under the landing platform, I recognized the unmistakable signs of a “smart ship.” Freshly scrubbed paint and gleaming brightwork told its own story. And before the winter had passed, I would learn just how smart the _Langley_ really was. For Jack Towers, the naval aviator, was one of the best ship handlers in the whole service. He greeted me outside his cabin and promptly asked me to stay for lunch.
Jack Towers, one of the real pioneers of American aviation, was the acknowledged leader of the younger generation. He had served with distinction in World War I as a member of Admiral Sims’s staff in London, and though some of his contemporaries resented his tendency to adopt English mannerisms, his juniors swore by him. Now he invited some of his department heads, old friends of mine, like Pete Mitscher, Monty Montgomery, and Bobby Moulton, to join us for a bull fest. And hardly had we sat down around the mess table before I found myself in the middle of the big issue of the moment.
My personal situation was complicated by the fact that I was a newcomer to aviation and now, by seniority and assignment, in a position of authority over such old-timers as were gathered around the table. No doubt they thought my qualification as naval aviator had been donated by Admiral Moffett, and discounted my flying ability accordingly. With this in mind I had sought to tread softly through the lunch, but the issue now raised must be met head on.
It developed that Admiral Reeves held curious notions about carrier tactics. He was insisting that a 500-foot, 10,000-ton vessel like the _Langley_ could earn her salt only by operating sufficient aircraft to make her an effective military instrument. He had mentioned thirty-six planes, or two full fighter squadrons, as the minimum complement. But _Langley_ officers had crystallized the opinion that not more than a third as many, say twelve airplanes, could be flown off the _Langley_ and received on board without hazard to the lives of pilots. That key factor of safety had been argued out in conferences but “Bull” Reeves had stood pat. The _Langley_ officers, now concerned, put the clincher on me.
“It’s up to you,” someone said, while the Filipino mess attendants passed the coffee.
“How come?” I inquired in some surprise.
“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.
Squadrons were also being assembled for the carriers. _Langley_ units based full-time at San Diego and carried out their protracted gunnery schedules over nearby areas. Some _Lexington_ squadrons were being gradually assembled at the Naval Air Station at Norfolk, Virginia, while the _Saratoga_ units were being brought together at San Diego. These squadrons would be equipped with the new air-cooled fighters and torpedo bombers we had been developing at BUAERO and manned with new pilots then under training at Pensacola. The whole organization, under the leadership of Admiral Reeves, must be rounded out and trained during the next few years.
The admiral had always been “Bull” Reeves to his contemporaries, from the day when he had created the first football headgear so that he might get into the Army-Navy football game after a serious head injury. His juniors in aviation now called him “Billy Goat” because he wore one of the few beards then extant in the Navy. This beard was a lovely gray Vandyke which, with the admiral’s shell-pink complexion, gave him an air of grave distinction that quite belied an uproarious sense of humor. He had a deep, vibrant voice and he spoke with great eloquence—a fact he ascribed to his having once studied for the ministry. Standing before an assembly of his brother officers he could expound the weightiest tactical or strategic doctrines in an entertaining and enlightening manner, speaking always with the obvious relish of a man engaged in an undertaking at which he knows he is competent. He differed from Admiral Moffett in almost every characteristic, but especially in his logical, measured approach to a problem. Though trained as an engineer, he had specialized in tactics and strategy and had brought to these subjects an orderly but very
## active mind. Even as I slid into the routine of my new job, I looked
forward with impatience to the Old Man’s return.
On the first morning that we faced each other across the desk in his bare office, Admiral Reeves raised the question of the _Langley’s_ reluctance to expand her operating complement. Entertaining as he did a high regard for Captain Towers both as a seaman and as a leader, and having in mind the initiative with which Jack had pioneered naval aviation, the admiral surmised that the long list of casualties among pilots had tended to overemphasize the hazards of flying off carriers. The fleet problem that was scheduled for the coming spring would offer an opportunity for an air attack on Pearl Harbor. In light of the probable arrival of the big carriers the following year he wanted to try out some of his ideas on the _Langley_, if only on a small scale. However, the scale proposed by that vessel was too small for any use at all. Our job was to find some way around the difficulty.