"Smart & Efficient"

When the last land dissolves upon the horizon, the sea assumes its elemental, immutable aspect. Ships seen upon it then most truly represent man's control over inanimate nature" if not over himself. President Hoover, 36 miles at sea off the Virginia Capes last week, had a chance to ponder such verities. Over the horizon from the north, looming bullet-grey in the brightening morning, moved four-fifths of the nation's fighting seapower. As an engineer Mr. Hoover had to admire. As a President with instincts toward creative civilization, who had just engaged to limit such power mutually with other nations, he must have pondered.

"Backbone of the Fleet." The gentlest of swells and a light air from the west made it a perfect review morning, far happier than the morning in 1927 when Calvin Coolidge was first squeamish and had to sit down, then frankly seasick and had to lie prostrate below while the Fleet roared salutes for his momentarily unmanned office. President Hoover stood under the eight-inch guns of the Salt Lake City--10,000 tons, last crisp word in U. S. cruisers--and peered closely through binoculars at the trim masses of war machinery which soon came plowing past. From the light-cruiser division (eight strong, four abreast, led by the Detroit), then from the destroyer divisions (26 strong, four abreast, led by the cruiser Concord), then from the dreadnaughts (eleven strong, in three columns, led by the Texas),* finally from the 33,000-ton aircraft carriers Saratoga and Lexington, the presidential salute of 21 guns per ship plus the "Star-Spangled Banner" by each ship's band, came muffled from a mile away downwind. Alert at first, then seemingly lost in thought, the central figure stood with his fedora hat on during most of the spectacle. He did not reply when white-whiskered old Admiral Charles Frederick Hughes, soon-retiring Chief of Naval Operations,* ejaculated as the dreadnaughts passed: "I tell you those ships are the backbone of the Fleet!''

Stolen Show. The cruisers, destroyers and big submarines V-1 and V-2 (which had saluted by diving when abreast of the reviewing ship) all sped to the southeastern horizon, the dreadnaughts turning eastward into battle line, to prepare for a mock engagement between the Fleet's light forces and its "backbone." Meantime, having sounded their little salute guns, the Saratoga and Lexington turned westward, into the wind. The Salt Lake City turned with them so that she ran between. On the 2 1/2-acre plateau decks of the two huge mother ships waited 150 airplanes, with all motors thundering, all propellers whirring brightly in the sun, mechanics in varicolored costumes moving among them in the artificial gale their blades created, to make final meticulous adjustments. In "sky forward" (crow's nest) of the Lexington, in rumpled grey suit and floppy hat, the Navy's prime War ace, Lieut. David Sinton Ingalls, now Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics, squinted down upon the scene, watching the flight officers' red flag on the bridge below. When a white flag appeared, their show would begin.

On the distant "Sara,"/- like a bee leaving a log, a little thing crept to the bow and took flight, climbing rapidly and straight away over the sea. Another bee followed, then another, another. On the Lexington's flight deck, the concatenation of motors was heightened by one motor opened almost to its limit. Up the clean wood deck, between the broad yellow guide lines, darted the first of the Lexington's little broad-winged, single-seated biplane fighters, light blue below, yellow on top, with thunder-bolting eagles on its sides. Away it shot over the concave precipice of the ship's square bow; faltered, lifted, droned away. The rest of the Lexington's planes followed, at 15 to 30-second intervals. Away from their carriers, against the sky, the planes looked bigger, changed from bees to birds. As they took their close-packed, triad formations, the ocean changed to a duck-marsh, with here wedges of swift teal (the fighters), here a group of bigger black duck (scouts), and there a string of geese (the bombers). In about a half-hour enough planes were put in the sky to panic-strike, if not devastate, any city in the world. New Yorkers who had seen the Navy's great air "raid" (TIME, May 19) or readers of Hearstpapers who two days prior to the review had seen Cartoonist Windsor McKay's nightmarishly memorable picture of a city gassed from the skies, were more than ever impressed with the perfection of modern sea machinery for war.

The Attack. With no shots fired and distances immense, the engagement of the "backbone" by cruisers and destroyer was unimpressive, inconclusive. Then out of nowhere in the heavens over the battle fleet, aiming at a point 300 yards abeam the Salt Lake City (to avoid possibility of a crash), one fighting plane after another shot screaming down in power dives of attack, at speeds (250 m. p. h. and more) impossible to meet with defensive gunfire. These were followed by the "smokers," larger planes flying low to lay five-mile banks of white obscurity behind which, from nowhere on the battle line's port quarter, torpedo planes approached wing-to-water, theoretically launching torpedoes at the dreadnaughts from close astern, wheeling back through the smoke to safety when their work was done. Planes catapulted from the battleships sought to repel these two types of attack but were greatly outnumbered. Though obviously favored by perfect weather and the arbitrary plan of the "battle," the Navy's overhead forces had easily "stolen the show." As a final touch, a plane from the Saratoga equipped with a special hook flew up to the silvery dirigible Los Angeles which had been idling aloft all day, and attached itself, exchanged messages, detached, glided back to the Saratoga--first time such a feat had been attempted over the ocean.*

Applause. As the Salt Lake City headed in for Old Point Comfort, her wireless crackled out: "The President wishes to congratulate the Commander-in-Chief, the officers and men of the Fleet on the smart and efficient manner in which the individual units performed their tasks."

The Commander -in -Chief, Admiral William Veazie Pratt, from his flagship Texas, crackled the Navy's traditionally simple praise: "Well done."

* The seven capital ships absent were: Pennsylvania at Philadelphia Navy yard; Arizona and Mississippi at Norfolk Navy yard, all being overhauled and modernized; at Brooklyn Navy yard, the Arkansas and Wyoming, being overhauled; at Puget Sound the New York; at San Pedro, Calif., the Idaho, just overhauled at Puget Sound.

* Not to be confused with white-whiskered old Charles Evans Hughes (no kin), Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the U. S.

/- In huge letters across the stern ends of their decks, to guide homing airmen, the carriers bear the abbreviations SARA and LEX, now their nicknames.

* All but a half-dozen of the planes on the carriers are land planes. Each is equipped with a rubber bag and air pump to inflate it in case of forced landings at sea. Two destroyers escort each carrier as tenders for such mishaps.

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