Squadrons were also being assembled for the carriers. _Langley_ units based full-time at San Diego and carried out their protracted gunnery schedules over nearby areas. Some _Lexington_ squadrons were being gradually assembled at the Naval Air Station at Norfolk, Virginia, while the _Saratoga_ units were being brought together at San Diego. These squadrons would be equipped with the new air-cooled fighters and torpedo bombers we had been developing at BUAERO and manned with new pilots then under training at Pensacola. The whole organization, under the leadership of Admiral Reeves, must be rounded out and trained during the next few years. The admiral had always been “Bull” Reeves to his contemporaries, from the day when he had created the first football headgear so that he might get into the Army-Navy football game after a serious head injury. His juniors in aviation now called him “Billy Goat” because he wore one of the few beards then extant in the Navy. This beard was a lovely gray Vandyke which, with the admiral’s shell-pink complexion, gave him an air of grave distinction that quite belied an uproarious sense of humor. He had a deep, vibrant voice and he spoke with great eloquence—a fact he ascribed to his having once studied for the ministry. Standing before an assembly of his brother officers he could expound the weightiest tactical or strategic doctrines in an entertaining and enlightening manner, speaking always with the obvious relish of a man engaged in an undertaking at which he knows he is competent. He differed from Admiral Moffett in almost every characteristic, but especially in his logical, measured approach to a problem. Though trained as an engineer, he had specialized in tactics and strategy and had brought to these subjects an orderly but very active mind. Even as I slid into the routine of my new job, I looked forward with impatience to the Old Man’s return. On the first morning that we faced each other across the desk in his bare office, Admiral Reeves raised the question of the _Langley’s_ reluctance to expand her operating complement. Entertaining as he did a high regard for Captain Towers both as a seaman and as a leader, and having in mind the initiative with which Jack had pioneered naval aviation, the admiral surmised that the long list of casualties among pilots had tended to overemphasize the hazards of flying off carriers. The fleet problem that was scheduled for the coming spring would offer an opportunity for an air attack on Pearl Harbor. In light of the probable arrival of the big carriers the following year he wanted to try out some of his ideas on the _Langley_, if only on a small scale. However, the scale proposed by that vessel was too small for any use at all. Our job was to find some way around the difficulty. CHAPTER FOURTEEN Germ of a Big Idea