CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Frigate Birds

Up until this moment, everything done had been in rehearsal. Now, with the possibility of enemy contact at any instant, the flag bridge took on a new atmosphere of high tension. The admiral stood out on the bridge, binoculars glued to his eyes, while the breeze fingered his beard. Frank Wagner hovered beside him, alert for a suggestion or command, a quizzical expression in his eyes, indicative of his humorous reaction to stress. As we followed the tiny fighters racing directly ahead along our course, we were startled by a quick reversal that brought them racing back to the carrier.

At that time, fighters carried no radio. They zoomed across the bow at low altitude to drop short sections of garden hose as message holders. The fighters had sighted a destroyer dead ahead, an enemy scout, the _Breck_, heading for us on a collision course. Even as we read the message, we made out the ship’s mast, dead ahead. We’d been caught.

The _Breck_ turned to parallel our course, well out of gun range, and seemed to be looking us over. The flag-chief quartermaster, gazing at her through his long glass, turned to the admiral.

“Sir,” he remarked, “it looks funny to me. I wonder if he thinks maybe he’s sighted the _Lexington_.” The admiral lowered his binoculars and turned to me.

“Well,” he asked, “what do you want to do with her?” Now, the lack of a plane-guard vessel for the next morning had lain heavily on my mind. We had enough worries without risking a take-off crack-up and a lost pilot. It must have been this that prompted my facetious reply.

“Tell her to plane-guard us, sir!” I laughed.

Quick as a flash the admiral barked the signal to the flag-chief quartermaster. As the bright flags fluttered in the late afternoon light, the _Breck_ answered. Then to our amazement, she turned and swung into position directly astern of us, four hundred yards away. There we might have left her save that Ken Whiting, the official umpire, felt obliged to make a ruling. And so we theoretically opened fire on her with the after ten-inch, and theoretically sank her. Ken signaled the _Breck_ that she was now disabled without radio to communicate our position.

We were just congratulating ourselves on this break and sweating out the rest of the daylight, when the _Omaha_ reported being attacked by the cruiser _Detroit_. Her captain, Dick White, who had once been my skipper on the destroyer tender _Bridgeport_ and was an old friend of Admiral Reeves, had doped out our intentions, and disregarding his orders, had left his scouting station to look for us. Even then he was broadcasting our position in plain English, instead of code, begging the _Lexington_ to come and get us.

Ken Whiting now ruled both cruisers out of the action. The _Omaha_, already short of fuel, slowed down, but the _Detroit_, calmly taking up the plane-guard station, began a play-by-play account of _Big Sara’s_ every move. Well, the fat was in the fire now; Captain Dick knew we needed a plane guard too badly to wave him off, and besides, he knew Bull Reeves too well to worry about any future disciplining.

The tropic night fell on the Gulf of Panama, coming down suddenly at five bells of the first dog watch. All night we steamed at thirty knots with the stars closed in around our darkened decks. At midnight the admiral called me to the flag bridge.

“All the squadron commanders have been up in a body to ask me to launch immediately and not wait for dawn. What do you say?” That was a poser. No doubt, sweating it out down in the ready room, fearful that Army or Navy aircraft might catch them flat-footed on deck during the night, they had come up with their big idea.

“Sir,” I replied, finally, “we have no reason to believe that any night fighters or bombers can be out this far. At least we haven’t seen or heard any signs. To change a plan involves new risks, and we have enough already.”

“You’re right,” the admiral agreed. “I’ll tell them to turn in; we’ll stick to the original plan.”

Standing on the flag bridge with the seas slapping against the side and the night breeze filtering down our necks, I began to appreciate, for the first time, the kind of courage that was being displayed by this man. A half-dozen rivals, candidates for his job, were sitting back, waiting for a break. It was the old Navy Game, keep your neck in and let the other fellow take the risks. Sooner or later it pays off—if you live long enough. Bull Reeves had never played that game.

“Sir,” I began, “there’s a lot of brass hats watching us tonight.” The admiral inclined his head to hear me above the roar of the wind. “And,” I went on, “there’d be many a dry eye tomorrow if you should slip.” For a while I thought he hadn’t heard.

“I know,” he replied slowly, “but a commander who stops to appraise the impact of a military decision upon his personal fortunes has no right to be entrusted with a command.”

After a while, dark figures began stirring among the parked airplanes, and the blue lights winked on—flashlights screened by paper torn from packages of absorbent cotton, loaned by the sick bay. Still later, the staccato bark of an engine and red flashes from its short exhaust stacks signaled all mechanics to start their engines.

By now the night air was cold and we shivered as we stood around on the bridge, looking down on an expanse of exhaust flames. Ship’s officers had taken their stations, their telephone helmets on their heads. Pete Mitscher and Ken Whiting stood in the wings of the bridge. The roar of engines swelled then ceased as suddenly as it had started.

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.

“Frigate birds?” his adjutant had inquired.

“Frigate birds, my eye!” the general had retorted. “Those are enemy aircraft and they’ve caught us flat-footed.”

Our own high-rankers, while appreciating the tactical skill Bull Reeves had shown, had entirely missed the implications of his accomplishment. While the Army Air Service had been talking air power, the Navy had created the first American strategic air force, not one riveted to shore bases but one roving the high seas—on the backs of the fleet! Yet if this revolutionary development was lost upon most Americans, it was not lost upon our potential enemies, the Japanese.