Grand Joint Exercise No. 4
The fleet of almost any second class power could have come dangerously close to capturing the Philippines last week. All of the fighting force that remained at Cavite, base of the U. S. Asiatic Fleet, were four tenders, twelve submarines, three destroyers up in drydock for overhauling, mine sweepers and auxiliary craft.
Three days' sailing away, lapping their grey noses in the yellow river off Shanghai's Bund, lay the Asiatic fleet's fighting strength. There, under Admiral Montgomery Meigs Taylor, were the cruiser Houston, ten destroyers and the yacht Isabel. The Navy's starry ensign also fluttered from the bows of seven gunboats patrolling the Yangtze River while off Nanking were three more U. S. destroyers. Meanwhile the Navy was busy elsewhere.
Over the horizon from California in the long swell of the Pacific rocked the clock-faced fighting tops of nine battleships of the Battle Force (Pennsylvania, California, New York, Oklahoma, Nevada, Tennessee, Colorado, Maryland, West Vir-ginia). Their radios were ominously silent and they did not come alone. Trailing in their wake was the naval sinew which complements the nation's mightiest sea arm. Jauntily steamed four light cruisers (Omaha, Cincinnati, Concord, Detroit). Rolling porpoise-wise came 24 destroyers. Like sluggish metal fish, six submarines crawled along with decks awash. Plowing forward in the procession were the Lexington and the Saratoga with aircraft on their flat backs. Mine sweepers, oilers, repair, supply and hospital ships, seagoing camp-followers, all bunched together in a guarded block. Theoretically 25 troop transports accompanied the armada, carrying a command of 40.000 men under Major General Malin Craig. Actual personnel of this Blue fleet, about to engage with the Black defenders of the Hawaiian Islands in Grand Joint Exercise No. 4, was 27.250 officers and men.
This year the problem is to recapture Hawaii from a hypothetical enemy. As the zero hour approached for Admiral Richard Henry Leigh's Blue force to cross a deadline and commence hostilities, the defensive Blacks, surmising that the attack's spearhead would aim at Honolulu's Pearl Harbor naval base, sent skeleton columns of soldiers, sailors and marines to patrol the coast of Oahu and guard against a surprise landing. Actually mobilized to defend Hawaii were 20,000 men, 17 sub marines, four light mine layers, two mine sweepers and 45 aircraft under Major General Briant Harris Wells, commander of the Army's Hawaiian Department.