(See front cover)
Three weeks ago David Sinton ("Dave") Ingalls, 32-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, bounced out of his Washington swivel chair, climbed into a high-speed naval plane, went streaking away to another great war which commanded his intense and invariably enthusiastic attention last week. In 1917 this same active, able scion of a rich Ohio family had left his freshman class at Yale to join the U. S. Naval Air Service. Attached to the British near Dunkerque on the Channel, he downed six German planes, won three prized medals for bravery. He came home a boy of 19 and the U. S. Navy's one and only ace. The "war" to which he flew this year was the Navy's annual game off Panama in the Pacific.
What interested Assistant Secretary Ingalls in this mimic sea battle, what made his swivel chair doubly uncomfortable in the Navy Department, was the fact that for the first time Naval strategists had so arranged their war problem that the full defensive power of aircraft would be truly tested. One side was made top-heavy with sea armament; the other's strength was in the air. At stake was everything "Dave" Ingalls had worked and talked and planned for during his two years in office.
As he flew down Florida, hopped to Jamaica, crossed the Caribbean to the Canal Zone—everywhere the favorite guest at most important dinners—the Navy's forces were converging in the tropics. Before them was Fleet Problem 12. Eastward across the Pacific steamed a supposedly hostile fleet composed of nine battleships, an aircraft carrier (U.S.S. Langley) with 40 planes, three "treaty" cruisers, swarms of miscellaneous craft. With them were coming transports bearing 50,000 soldiers, hundreds of crated airplanes. Their aim— was to effect a landing on the Central American coast, set up their planes, smash the Panama Canal. Sharp eyes could easily have identified Rear-Admiral Frank Herman Schofield aboard the battleship California as the commander of this Black enemy fleet.
At Balboa lay the Blue defensive squadron under Vice Admiral Arthur Lee Willard aboard the Arkansas, only battleship in the line. To him had been assigned seven light cruisers, 22 destroyers, the giant aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga, a flock of submarines, the dirigible Los Angeles (used for the first time by international consent in war games). To drive the Black fleet back from a 1,000-mile jungle-fringed coast line Admiral Willard relied chiefly on a force of 225 battle planes.
Assistant Secretary Ingalls' immediate interest was the part as an air scout to be played by the Los Angeles which he boarded to observe the maneuvers. In her performance he saw a vital experiment which would influence the Navy's whole policy on lighter-than-aircraft development. Said he: "We know the Los Angeles will never be effective as a war instrument. If she does not show up very well we won't be surprised but if she is able to do anything, we'll be tickled to death."