One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (18 page)

  
32
.
  
Naval aviators in the Volunteer Reserve were largely “Pensacola graduates who were not attached to a Fleet Reserve squadron, largely because of their place of residence,” ibid.

  
33
.
  
Ibid.

  
34
.
  
Initial appropriations for fiscal 1935 partially restored the number of annual drills for aviators to thirty-six from the twenty-two that had been held the year previous. Supplementary funds allowed forty-eight drills to be held by the end of the year. More important, flight training was returned to forty-five hours (although still none for the Volunteer Reserve), ibid.

  
35
.
  
The Horne Board comprised Rear Admiral Frederick J. Horne (then on the General Board) as senior member, and Captain George D. Murray, Commander Edwin T. Short, Lieutenant Colonel Lewie G. Merritt (USMC), and Lieutenant Commander Walton W. Smith as members. It operated according to the regulations governing Navy courts and boards. See Chisholm,
Waiting
(2001), pp. 736–41.

  
36
.
  
Transferred officers would be carried as additional numbers in the grades to which they were transferred and in any grades to which they might subsequently be promoted. To be eligible for transfer, officers must have completed eighteen months active duty since completing naval aviation cadet duty. Sea service requirements would not apply to transferred officers while in the grade to which they were originally appointed. Reserve naval aviators would be paid a lump sum ($500) when released from active duty. When mobilized, reservists would take precedence after the regular officers whose active service was one-half of theirs. To appoint up to 370 Reserve naval aviators to the regular line, a board of officers was established, the Leary Board, which in October 1940 recommended 3 Lieutenant Commanders, 20 Lieutenants, 56 Junior Lieutenants, and 284 Ensigns for the regular line. This constituted the largest such appointment of non–Naval Academy officers to the regular line since the Act of 4 June 1920.

  
37
.
  
The two-tier system meant that only some junior officers would be on the track to the higher grades; the remainder would be in and out, with some happy few given the opportunity to become regulars and the rest taken care of equitably by bonuses on separation.

  
38
.
  
From 1899 through 1915, in order to reduce the age of officers in the senior grades—if insufficient natural attrition (death, disability, dismissal, or resignation) occurred to provide the specified annual flow—a board of senior officers was constituted to “pluck” those officers deemed inefficient. Out of equity concerns, Congress rescinded approval of this mechanism in 1915. During the regime of promotion by seniority, officers were required to pass examinations before being promoted. However, these examinations were of insufficient rigor to weed out officers incompetent to the duties of the next higher grade. Rear Admiral G. T. Pettingill observed in 1933 that “examining boards have always been chickenhearted
about handling cases drastically because the penalty is so great.” Hearings before the General Board, Naval War College Microfilm Collection, 15 February 1933, p. 28.

  
39
.
  
Integration into the line did not, of course, mean that naval aviator officers appeared no different than their battleship brethren. To mark their additional qualification as a naval aviator, officers quickly sought a distinguishing badge (perhaps stimulated by Army aviators, who began wearing special badges in 1913). John Towers recollected in 1948 that when he took over the aviation desk in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations in autumn 1916, he recommended that naval aviators be authorized to wear an insignia. He submitted a design for same based on work by the naval artist Henry Reuterdahl, which was in turn modified by the manufacturer Bailey, Banks, and Biddle. “Origin of Navy Pilot Wings: Adm. Towers Recalls Artist-Designer,”
Naval Aviation News
(Autumn 1948): 21. Based on Towers' proposal, the Chief of Naval Operations wrote to the Bureau of Navigation in July 1917 that since the Army and foreign services already had aviation devices, naval aviators should be given comparable recognition. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels approved an amendment to the Navy's Uniform Regulations in September 1917, establishing official recognition of the “wings of gold”: “A Naval Aviator's device, a winged fouled anchor with the letters ‘U.S.', is hereby adopted to be worn by qualified Naval Aviators. This device will be issued by the Bureau of Navigation to Officers and Men of the Navy and Marine Corps who qualify as Naval Aviators, and will be worn on the left breast.” The first gold wings were evidently delivered two months later. No other line officers had such a distinguishing badge at the time. Submariners would not have their “dolphins” until 1924 (at Ernest King's recommendation), and it would be several decades more before the Navy's other communities developed their own distinguishing marks. In addition to the “wings of gold,” the same month Secretary Daniels approved the “aviation working greens” uniform (based on the Marine Corps' green uniform) for naval aviators, prompted by a desire that the aviators would have a practical uniform they would actually wear (aviators were already notorious for disregarding uniform requirements, in part because existing uniforms were poorly adapted to the conditions of flying). Add to the wings and the greens the aviators' brown shoes (worn with the greens and with khakis) and leather flight jackets—none of which were authorized for non-aviators—and it is not difficult to grasp the heartburn, if not outright hostility, aviators occasioned among the latter, particularly senior officers. Naval aviators might be part of the line but they made no bones about what was in their view, their special status.

  
40
.
  
At a time when long-distance travel, even for naval aviators, was mostly accomplished by means of rail, this required a greater investment of time for aviators than that expended by their battleship brethren. Of course, naval air stations were largely at substantial remove from the northeastern United States. The implication is that special efforts were made to ensure that naval aviators would serve on the selection boards.

  
41
.
  
Hearings before the General Board, Naval War College Microfilm Collection, 15 February 1933, p. 28.

  
42
.
  
In testimony before the House Naval Affairs Committee, Admiral William Leahy, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, estimated that of the 1,219 officers commissioned under the Act of 4 June 1920, the law would remove 787 by 1942. Most of those would be aviators. To be sure, there was a genuine problem of stagnation in promotion, and existing length-of-service retirement provisions meant than many officers would be retired before being promoted. For example, by early 1934, 250 officers had accumulated on the Lieutenant Commanders' promotion list, but only eighty vacancies occurred annually. The law established the junior selection boards with one rear admiral as president and eight captains as members.

  
43
.
  
Army and Navy Register
, 30 June 1934, pp. 501, 517.

  
44
.
  
The Act of 11 May 1928 had already specified that “when Officers are assigned to airships on duty requiring them to participate regularly and frequently in aerial flights, the Secretary . . . shall determine and certify whether or not, in his judgment, the service to be performed is equivalent to sea duty. If such service as this is considered to be the equivalent of sea duty, it shall be considered to be actual sea service on sea-going ships for all purposes.” King also proposed that this language be made known to the selection boards. Memorandum, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics to the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation and the Judge Advocate General, 25 July 1934, Aer-F-3-HAD (OL P16-3), pp. 1–2. Records of the Bureau of Navigation, National Archives.

  
45
.
  
Leahy could only respond, weakly, that “repeated assignment to specialist duties of Officers below the grade of Commander has not had any adverse effect on these Officers' prospects of promotion and it is particularly important that it should not in the future have an adverse effect in view of the present policy of the Department to utilize young line Officers for the duties of the staff corps.”
Army and Navy Register
, 19 January 1935, p. 41.

  
46
.
  
Army and Navy Register
, 2 April 1938, p. 20.

  
47
.
  
Memorandum, Chief of Bureau of Navigation to All Flag Officers, 9 August 1938, Nav-en. Records of the Bureau of Navigation, National Archives.

  
48
.
  
House Document No. 566
, 76th Congress, 3rd Session, 16 January 1940, p. 4.

  
49
.
  
Ibid., pp. 19–20.

CHAPTER 6

Admiral Joseph Mason “Bull” Reeves, Father of Navy Carrier Aviation

Douglas V. Smith

Admiral Joseph Mason “Bull” Reeves
.

W
ar at sea in the twenty-first century was dominated in all its aspects by the advent and evolution of carrier aviation. More than any other single individual, Admiral Joseph Mason “Bull” Reeves left his mark indelibly on the mating of the aircraft carrier and her embarked aircraft as the centerpiece of American seaborne offensive lethality. Moreover, Reeves deserves significant credit for America's victory against the Japanese in World War II.

EARLY STAGES OF NAVAL AND CARRIER AVIATION

As early as April 1917 the Navy had 54 aircraft, and by November 1918 it had 2,107—yet the Navy's first carrier, the experimental USS
Langley
(CV-1), was not re-commissioned from the old collier
Jupiter
until late March 1922, well prior to entering the fleet.
¹
General Billy Mitchell lamented during his trial by courts-martial in 1925 that the Navy had estimated a requirement of $37,360,248 for aircraft procurement while the Army Air Corps—“entrusted by law with the serial defense over the land areas of the United States and its possessions, including protection of navy yards”—asked for only $24,582,000.
²
Mitchell found the Navy's obvious intent of building a huge land-based air fleet outrageous because the Navy had only one aircraft carrier, the
Langley
, an obsolete collier converted to a carrier capable of holding only thirty-six small airplanes (at that point in time) and with extremely limited speed—15.5 knots, half that of a battleship—and was building two more aircraft carriers, the
Lexington
and
Saratoga
, which were “practically obsolete before they were completed.”
³
He and others wondered why the Navy was intent on investing so heavily in aircraft that had questionable ability to support its congressionally mandated role of gaining and if necessary maintaining control over lines of American communications or intended battle areas at sea.

Thus the U.S. Navy found itself in the position of having to devise operational concepts, tactics, and doctrine for aircraft carriers that were not purpose-built and had not even reached operational status. What resulted, however, was not the disarray and lack of focus and purpose that one might expect. Detailed planning, gaming, and concept generation were completed at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, well prior to USS
Langley
joining the fleet. Commissioned in March and launched in November 1922, she did not enter active fleet service until 1924 when she was transferred to the Pacific Fleet. She lacked any real operational potential until then Captain Joseph Mason Reeves assumed his position as Commander, Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet, aboard her on 12 October 1925.

Most of the early Navy carrier tactics were formulated during the presidency of Admiral William Sowden Sims at the Naval War College, 1919–1922, before the first carrier, USS
Langley
, entered the fleet.
⁴
Thus tactics were developed to large extent before there was even a carrier with which to test the ideas on which they were based.

Originally
Langley
had been USS
Jupiter
(Collier #3), from 1913 to 1920.
Langley
displaced 13,990 tons empty and 15,150 with a full load, was 523 feet in length and 65 feet 3 inches wide, with an above-water height of 22 feet 1 inch fully loaded and a speed of 15.5 knots. She could ultimately carry forty-eight aircraft and had one elevator and one catapult (with a second catapult added soon after she was launched).