What seemed to be a ridiculous policy of security in the matter of military and nonmilitary information had plummeted down from the Navy's high command to our humble squadron, gathering inertia and obstructionist waste like a snowball. I found out later that an admiral, if asked politely, will tell you in general something about his plans, or admit that he hasn't any, but the lower the rank, the greater the temptation to act as if one actually knew something about what he was keeping secret.

For some unaccountable reason, no one was supposed to know that Torpedo 16 was going on the Lexington, that Torpedo 16 was currently at Quonset, that we flew TBF's, or that we practiced bombing and gunnery when we flew them. It seemed that our families could know less about us than the Japanese. In point of fact, of course, the Japs knew when the Lex was ordered, launched, commissioned, and put underway; that since she was a carrier, she would doubtless have an air group on her; that she was listed as CV-16 on the books, she would probably carry Air Group 16. I doubt the Japs cared where Sixteen's squadrons were until the squadrons reached Pearl Harbor, at which time anyone could find it out anyway. The Japs knew that a torpedo-bomber could carry bombs or a torpedo, and after seeing the first TBF make a torpedo attack knew its speed and armament, and after seeing a TBF make a bombing attack knew simply by counting the explosions and their intensity that the plane carried 2000 pounds of bombs. But no one in the United States was supposed to know this. Later on, when we showered Japanese ships with rockets and Japanese harbors with mines, we could not mention these enterprises in publicity reports, presumably so that the American people could not find out what the enemy obviously knew.

Another facet of the security policy -the four hour watches and patrols around the hangars and planes - was discomfortable but necessary. But the Standby system was a legitimate anathema to us. Under this system, half the pilots had to stay on the station every night, reputedly to man planes in case of air attack. Yet while husbands spent wifeless nights "in a stew in B.O.Q.," they were never given instructions as to which planes they would fly away, where they would fly them, or even to what dispersal areas they would taxi them if there were no flyaway orders. Furthermore, standby pilots were allowed to go to the Officers Club and drink as much as they pleased, thus nullifying the whole idea of air-raid preparation.

The system had a sensible theory behind it, but was ludicrous for the above reasons. Moreover, it led to a disagreeable personnel problem. Since we bachelors rarely cared to leave the station for a twenty mile struggle to Providence, we nobly volunteered to stand by for the married men when they had the duty and we had no plans. A few weeks of this subsidiary system led to its entrenchment: the husbands seemed to resent having the duty at all, and the bachelors found themselves dated up as standbys days before they were able to make any plans at all about going out for a certain evening. We were assured that the hubbies would stand by for us when we hit foreign ports, and, never having been to sea, were gullible enough to believe this.

The high percentage of married men in the Squadron also had an effect on the morale. Newlyweds viewed the approaching embarkation for distant duty with more and more distaste, and came to feel that flying itself was an imposition on their happiness. At the time, some of us actually liked to fly and were anxious to get to sea, so that there was a latent friction between the two groups. Another smoldering conflict lay between the pilots who had chosen torpedo-bombing duty and those who had wanted to be fighter pilots. Fighting Squadron 16, of course, never failed to remark that all aviators outside their unit were disappointed fighter pilots, and although the accusation was far from true universally, it hit home in a number of cases. And the jokes about mortality among torpedo-bombers were only occasionally funny.

The chief reason for our dismal outlook in that Quonset winter and spring seemed to lie in a cleavage between our senior officers and the rest of the squadron. We had an ambitious Commanding Officer, a harassed Executive Officer, and a muddled Flight Officer, and their very real problems at the time seemed to emulate from their personalities rather than from their jobs. The Skipper, Bob Isely, had a very complex character that underwent an amazing change during the lifetime of the Squadron. Without combat experience himself and with less flying time in a TBF than most of the pilots, still knew a lot about flying, the Navy, the war, and the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean, and he was faced with the task of creating an efficient combat force out of a group of cocky and fairly irresponsible ensigns. But he went at his training task, I thought, by way of command rather then co-operation. I had been led to believe that a squadron was (as ours later almost came to be) a team in which every move was considered and taken democratically, where every pilot had a chance to try out for positions of section-leader and wing-man, where each man contributed an equal share to the central notion of attack. I found Torpedo 16 another cadet training squadron, where positions on the team were assigned by rule of seniority, and ours was not to reason why.