Army & Navy – MARINES: Flattops for Leathernecks

Without firing a shot or uttering one cuss word (in public), the Marine Corps won another notable campaign. Last week the Navy announced that several of its new carriers would be manned by Marine airmen. Their prime mission: support of Marine ground troops in assaults on Pacific beachheads.

Although the carriers are baby flattops (CVEs) and not big, slick beauties of the Essex class, the Navy’s announcement quieted the Marine air arm’s long clamor for a share in carrier-based flying. Before the war a few Marine outfits had been carrier-based, but by Pearl Harbor they were all flying from land airdromes; and that was where the Navy left them.

Even before Jap air power was finally liquidated in the South Pacific and the war moved to the west, most Marine air outfits found themselves hunting for vanishing game. Life got to be dull and morale flagged.

In Washington’s Navy Building, the marines’ clamor for carriers grew. The chorus leader: stubby, black-browed Major General Louis E. Woods, director of aviation. His best refrain: Marine airmen were better qualified to blast the way for their shipmates than flyers of any other service.

Louis Woods had gone back to the Pacific (to be commander of the fourth air wing there) when the Navy finally handed down its decision, but everything was ready. Promptly the Marine Corps announced that its seafaring air group commander was barrel-chested, 44-year-old Colonel Albert D. Cooley, veteran of Bougainville. Colonel Cooley will never become an admiral: the Marine carriers will be manned and commanded by Navymen. But he will boss a potent striking force: several squadrons of gull-winged, bomb-bearing Vought Corsairs, the first to be put in carrier service. This week his pilots were hard at work at carrier training at a California base, hoped to be ready for sea duty soon.