Army & Navy – NAVY: Battle Lost

When Navy’s No. 1 airman, Rear Admiral John H. Towers, head of BuAer (Bureau of Aeronautics), was last week made a vice admiral it was a promotion for Admiral Towers but a demotion for the Navy’s air arm. For Towers was sent out to command all Navy flyers in the Pacific and his key job in the Washington high command was given to a battleship admiral.

New BuAer Chief Rear Admiral John Sidney McCain, 58, is a good officer. But like many other so-called air admirals, he got an airman’s rating late, is not an airman by profession, but a battleship admiral with pay-and-a-half and a flying suit.* Since his air training at Pensacola m 1936, at the age of 52, Battleshipman McCain has had little to do with air developments.

No Pensacola admiral is Admiral Towers. He has been flying since Glenn Curtiss taught him how in 1911. It was he who commanded the famous NCs when the NC4 became the first (1919) plane to cross the Atlantic. When appointed chief of BuAer he had been 28 years an airman.

Other Navy flyers, hampered by line-admiral apathy toward aviation and by the sea duty required for promotion to flag rank, have not fared so well. Of about a dozen flyers qualified by age and experience for some of the Navy’s top jobs, Towers has been the only one to make the grade. That Towers got as far as he did was perhaps due to the fact that, unlike others, he did not squabble with the battleship admirals. His persuasive methods helped get the flyers more planes and carriers but did not win the final battle.

Airmen had hoped that with the three stars raising him to rank comparable with Army Air Chief “Hap” Arnold’s he would get the job of Vice Chief of Naval Operations for Air, at last giving the air arm a voice in the grand strategy of the war. Neither promotions for top airmen nor the expected naval reorganization ever materialized. Instead Towers got the undefined job of Commander of the Pacific Fleet Air Forces, which put him on the staff of Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet—an apparently anomalous position since the carriers over which he is supposed to exercise authority operate under orders of task force commanders, usually battleship admirals.

As a result of Admiral Towers’ transfer there is now no airman in a position to participate in the strategic thinking of the Navy. At the time when airmen have practically won the battle over surface fleets at sea, they have lost the battle decisively in Washington.

* Others in the same category: COMINCH Ernest Joseph King, who became a Pensacola admiral at 49. He once commanded the Lexington, but his real love is submarines. Vice Admiral Frederick Joseph Home, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, who became a naval air observer at 46. He once commanded the carrier Saratoga, later the Fleet’s aircraft battle force. Rear Admiral Arthur Byron Cook, onetime BuAer chief, now in charge of aircraft operating with the Atlantic Fleet, who learned to fly at 54 Vice Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., the Navy’s senior admiral at sea, COMCARPAC (Commander of Carriers in the Pacific) until Admiral Towers’ new appointment, who got his flight training at 53. Nonetheless Halsey is rated the most experienced of U.S. aviator commanders, has a real knowledge of the functions of aircraft] which he displayed in raids on Wake, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. Now he has been relieved of carrier command—by his own request—to devote himself to commanding task forces.