World: Up, the Rebels!

So many of the pilots aboard one of the Navy’s big carriers were Southerners that a plane dispatcher just naturally started waving them off with the Texas Lone Star flag, instead of the usual checkered square. This caused small comment. But when the dispatcher switched to the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy, it was too much.

Two or three Yankee pilots demanded a return to the official flag. On the ship’s ticker system they called on “all men who love the Union” to stand together and if necessary “trample the flag of Jeff Davis in the dust.”

But the Stars and Bars still fluttered on the flight deck.