All at Sea

Shaking down in the Caribbean last week was the first of a new class of monster aircraft carriers, the Midway -- the U.S. Navy's and the world's mightiest warship. As a fighting machine, the Midway seemed to have everything: her flight deck was armored; thousands of tons of alloy steel encased her vitals; she had 200,000 h.p. to drive her 45,000 tons (60,000 or more at full load) at better than 33 knots; in her new, long-barreled 5-inch guns there was fire power to keep an enemy away while 120 planes operated from her roomy, two-acre flight deck.

Yet, like the rest of today's Navy, she was far from fit to fight. She lacked one essential element which no shipfitter could install: skilled manpower.

Demobilization was the reason. Before she put to sea on her shakedown, Captain Joseph F. Bolger* had warned that she might be unable to leave port unless qualified replacements were supplied at once, to take the place of engine-room officers and men going ashore for discharge. Scraping holes in the bottom of its manpower barrel, the Bureau of Naval Personnel had found enough hands to keep the Midway's twelve boilers and four engines running.

Over the Side, Over the Hill. But every time she put into port, more crewmen had become eligible for a "ruptured duck" lapel button. By last week, 50 officers and 500 men had gone over the side with their bags.

Though replacements kept the Midway's complement only a hundred or two below her wartime strength of 3,425 (excluding aviators), this was no index to the crew's efficiency, for most of them had never been to sea before--there were even chief petty officers in this class.

The Midway was so vast (986 ft. long) and so intricately divided into watertight compartments below the hangar deck that a boot sailor could be excused if he took days to find his way around. But the vastness of the flight deck eased the operations of Commander John T. ("Tommy") Blackburn's Air Group 74; pilots even approved the emery-paper landing surface on the steel deck. The 5-inch, .54-caliber guns had beginners' luck and brought down a good bag of towed sleeves and radio-controlled drone target planes. Eventually, all departments would function as smoothly. But it would take time and a stable complement.

* Who will assume his rank of rear admiral as soon as he is detached from the Midway.

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