CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Maneuver for Position

When the commander in chief released the preliminary statement of the 1929 fleet problem, we in COMAIRONS staff wore broad smiles of satisfaction. For while the exercises contemplated a conventional assault on the defenses of the Panama Canal, the problem was so stated as to convince us that the high command was beginning at last to recognize the role of the carrier in warfare at sea. A “red” fleet, comprising the modern battleships then based in the Pacific with its accompanying submarines, destroyers, and train, moving into the Gulf of Panama with the object of attacking the Canal, would be opposed by a friendly “blue” fleet which had just transited the Canal and moved out into the Gulf to defend it. The blue fleet comprised the vessels of the scouting fleet, then based in the Atlantic but reinforced by the _Lexington_ and _Langley_ from the “battle fleet” of the Pacific. This gave the defenders an air force comprising all the Army and Navy shore-based aircraft in the Panama Canal Zone, the aircraft of the scouting fleet then based on my old seaplane tender, the _Wright_, and the planes of the _Langley_ and _Lexington_; it left to the attackers the _Saratoga_ and her planes, under the command of Admiral Reeves.

In the past, these Panama maneuvers had been stereotyped battle-line tactics with the battle wagons steaming majestically behind a destroyer-laid smoke screen while bombarding the Canal with their turret guns at maximum range. After the fleet had fired a few blank charges or “primers” to simulate long-range attack and its airplanes had been “shot down” by the local defenders, the vessels would proceed to their anchorage in the Bay of Panama and all hands would go ashore for a big bust at the Union Club. Later there would be a “critique” in which the high rankers would stand up before a congregation of Army-Navy officers and alibi their failures, or try to impress their personalities upon the assembly. Following this, the social whirl would begin and fleet grand tactics would be put aside until another year.

This time we proposed to spring something new. Instead of tying _Big Sara_ to the apron strings of the battle wagons, we would propose that she be detached from the slow elements and sent on a wide southerly detour past the Galápagos Islands, along the north coast of South America, into the Gulf of Panama, through the screen of defending vessels, and up to a point where we might launch a predawn sneak attack on the Canal locks. The single drawback to our plan was the fact that the only vessel with enough high-speed cruising endurance to accompany _Big Sara_ was the light cruiser _Omaha_, flagship of Adm. Thomas J. Senn, Commander, Destroyer Squadrons. However, Admiral Reeves and Admiral Senn were warm personal friends. Capt. Harold R. Stark, Admiral Senn’s chief of staff, and I were on terms of warm regard. We decided to chance submitting the fantastic proposal that a senior unit commander be deprived of his flagship to plane-guard _Big Sara_.

Meanwhile, storm clouds had begun to darken our political horizon. With the close of the concentration period, we had come face to face with the moot question as to the relationships of carrier squadrons to their carriers. Based on our experience we prepared a letter recommending such changes in the Navy Regulations as would permit the commanding officers of carriers to exercise administrative control over their squadrons, yet still preserve their freedom for assignment by the admiral to task forces and give to him the tactical command. By this time, Capt. E. J. King had assumed command of the _Lexington_, and Capt. Harry E. Yarnell of the _Saratoga_. Both were extremely able men but with quite different temperaments. Captain King had positive ideas for which he fought with determination; Captain Yarnell, while equally clear in his opinions, approached the problem with judicious moderation. In both the _Lexington_ and the _Saratoga_, the positive convictions that the squadrons should be treated like gun divisions as an integral part of the ship rested largely with the old-line aviators running the air departments. And so we had a major difference of opinion in which senior naval aviators battled to keep the squadrons subservient to the carriers while we line officers, basing our convictions on practical experience, battled to keep the aircraft squadrons free. On the staff, we argued that the carriers existed for the squadrons; on the ships, they seemed to think it was the other way around. This conflict came at a time when our Washington fences were none too secure.

The fact that Admiral Moffett would complete his second full term as a bureau chief early in the coming year had intensified the efforts of his enemies to deny him reappointment. Their candidate for his relief was Admiral Reeves, and as a palliative they suggested that Admiral Moffett take over command of the Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet. To us on the staff, the whole thing looked like a tempest in a teapot and we, of course, took no position. Admiral Reeves busied himself with preparations for the fleet problem and expressed amusement over Washington politics. Then came the news that some of the boys in the Bureau now had a foot out for me, and had represented me to Admiral Moffett as a turncoat—a former Moffett man now gone full out for Bull Reeves. Aside from the impact of this conflict upon our personal fortunes, there was the question as to what position BUAERO would take in the matter of the relationships of squadrons to carriers. But more important still, such a warm front of political turbulence afforded a poor climate in which to make our big play for recognition of naval aviation in the forthcoming fleet problem.

Now at the height of our concern for the future, we got a wallop in the solar plexus that all but sent us down for the count. When the commander in chief finally issued his own estimate of the fleet problem and his operation orders for it, there was no reference whatever to our proposal for a sneak attack with the _Saratoga_. The battle wagons would do their time-honored square dance behind a destroyer smoke screen; they would fire a few gun primers and exercise their fire control; then they would proceed to the anchorage and hit the beach for a big party at the Union Club. When Frank Wagner brought the news to me and we both dropped into the admiral’s office, he lifted his beard from his paper work to stare at us with amazement.

“Whatever it is,” he boomed, “it can’t be as bad as you men look.” After Frank had briefed him on the disappointing situation, Admiral Reeves reached for a message blank and drafted a dispatch to the commander in chief at San Pedro, asking for a conference for himself and staff on the subject of the fleet problem.

Next morning COMAIRONS and staff took off for San Pedro in a flight of three Loening amphibians, the admiral riding as my passenger. As we mounted the flagship’s side ladder to her quarterdeck, we were met at the rail by the ship’s captain, none other than Claude C. Bloch, the man who had counseled my wife to get me out of the side shows and back under the main tent.

Admiral Pratt, his blouse unbuttoned to reveal an old-fashioned stiff-bosomed white shirt, received us in his cabin. Seated behind the usual billiard-cloth-covered table, he inquired courteously in his State-of-Maine accent to what he owed this visit from so distinguished a group. To Admiral Reeves’s inquiry whether Admiral Pratt had read our estimate of the situation for the fleet problem, the commander in chief replied in the negative; he had left the matter in the hands of his assistant chief of staff. His earlier rejection of our big idea had been doubly disappointing because we respected him as a sailorman of the old school and a man highly regarded as a strategist and tactician. With the news that he had not known of our proposal, our hopes began to revive.

Admiral Reeves swept in his outline with deft strokes: The _Saratoga_ would launch her aircraft two hours before dawn from a point some 150 miles away from the Canal. To reach that point where she would rendezvous with Admiral Pratt’s battleships, the _Saratoga_ would steam all night at 30 knots, accompanied only by the _Omaha_, her plane guard. In the 10 hours of darkness between sunset and the launching time, the _Saratoga_ would cover 300 miles. This, added to the 150-mile launching range, would put her 450 miles from Panama the night before the attack. During the previous day she would have run 360 miles more, and these distances were such that the enemy could hardly scout the possible areas of approach with any certainty of discovering the _Saratoga_. There was an excellent chance that we might get in undetected.

Admiral Pratt listened carefully and then put his finger on the one weak spot. He feared that if we launched aircraft that far at sea and lost even a single pilot, the reaction of public opinion at home might be most unfavorable.

Admiral Reeves replied that when he had offered the same objection I had produced the surprising record of the year’s operations. Using the new equipment provided by BUAERO we had gone through a full year without mechanical failure over the sea. Since we were drilling constantly to avoid cockpit failures it was reasonable to expect that we would have a similarly clean record off Panama.

Satisfied by the logic of this, Admiral Pratt began to warm to the whole idea. He suggested that, while it was now too late to change the orders all ready issued, this very fact might be converted to our advantage. The problem could be made a better exercise if we kept the new plan a secret among ourselves while he arranged later to spring a sudden change of orders on his fleet. He proposed to stop the formation somewhere along the west coast of Mexico, send out new orders by guard boat, release the _Saratoga_ for her wide southerly detour, and, incidentally, profit by the element of surprise inherent in radio silence.

When COMAIRONS and his staff departed the flagship, we walked on air.

The fleet sailed on schedule, maneuvering down along the Mexican coast, with the _Saratoga_ rehearsing her part with predawn take-offs and rendezvous. At the time we had no night-flying equipment and had done little night flying; but we had discipline, which was better than any equipment. Then one day the fleet flag made a signal for the fleet to stop and send boats for mail. When we opened our orders we found that Admiral Pratt had assigned the _Omaha_ to us as _Saratoga’s_ plane guard, but instead of transferring the DESRONS flag to a destroyer, had left Admiral Senn, Harold Stark, and all the staff on board.

As the _Omaha_, lifting in the swell, ranged up alongside the _Saratoga_, Admiral Senn, although Admiral Reeves’s senior, hailed the _Big Sara_ from his bridge by megaphone. “What do you want me to do, Bull?” he inquired.

Now we began working our speed up to twenty knots, proceeding in company with the _Omaha_ leading the way on our epoch-making wide southerly detour. And as the _Big Sara’s_ decks trembled under the thrust of her great screws, we on COMAIRONS’ staff began to feel a tremor around our hearts. Looking back into the vessel’s boiling wake we could see the churnings of white water as the vast power of her great motors drove her forward; a portion of the energy went into slip, but by far the largest part of it went into effective forward thrust. In that turbulence we could visualize what went on quite unseen in the slipstream of aviation, that remorseless force which was driving us at such breathtaking speed.

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.

This unsettled weather continued until the evening before the night run to Panama. We had run all day at 30 knots, with a section of fighters on the take-off spot, ready to launch the moment the weather cleared. The _Omaha_ had reported running short of fuel, giving us a new worry. Unless she could last the route at full speed, we would have to launch without a plane guard. Cruising along from one squall to the next, elated by the luck that had protected us against prowling _Lexington_ scouts, we suddenly broke out into the clear in an area of unlimited ceiling and visibility. It was about 5 P.M. when the fighters roared into the air.