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Navy Secretary Francis ("Rowboat") Matthews was furious when he learned about Burke's Op-23. He ordered Navy inspectors to raid Burke's offices. They descended late one afternoon and held Burke and his staff incommunicado all night while they searched through the files for secret papers (they found none). A few weeks later, Matthews drew a red line through Burke's name on a list of promotions to rear admiral; it was back on the next list after a press outcry and the personal intervention of Admiral Forrest Sherman, the new Chief of Naval Operations, with President Truman.
The Bad & the Good. Whatever its demerits, Op-23 did give Burke an unequaled opportunity to study his Navy and decide where it should head, once past its crisis. When he took command as CNO. it was far from where he thought it should be. Against a growing Russian submarine threat—an estimated 400 subs, about 150 of them modern, long-range boats—the Navy was, and is, behind in its antisubmarine development. Although beautiful, new supersonic jet aircraft were on the drawing boards and at test centers, the Navy's jet design lagged behind the Air Force, and behind the more realistic threats of Russian aircraft. The Bureau of Ships had not kept pace: for its carriers, the Navy was forced to take over British inventions—the steam catapult, the angled deck, the mirror landing system.
Equally pressing was the need to hold skilled technicians in the Navy, and here, progress has its own price. Explains an enlisted missileman at Norfolk: "This new equipment is getting so complicated that the makers find a junction area and slap a little black box over it. No one but the civilian technical representative can monkey with this little black box. The Navy man loses contact with his equipment. He begins to think about getting out so he can become a tech rep and work with the little black box himself."
Arleigh Burke knows only one way to meet such problems: proceed at 31 knots, all day and, if necessary, every day.
Hawks Through Peepholes. One day last week, Burke warmly greeted a visitor to his office. He sat behind his small desk, puffed on his battered pipe, and, while Filipino stewards served coffee, talked easily. The gentle, almost ingenuous, fagade was deceptive: watching like hawks from behind one-way peepholes at each end of the office were Burke's aides. They knew that they would soon be struck by a blizzard of memos, ideas and questions, all growing out of Burke's seemingly casual conversation. It is the same with every conversation Burke has.
Since becoming CNO, Burke has held regular stag dinners for young Navy lieutenants in his Observatory Hill quarters off Washington's Massachusetts Avenue. After dinner Burke lights up and asks the lieutenants to talk. They do—and next morning the memos flow to Burke's aides.