With a view to further speeding sea rescue, we asked BUAERO to undertake for us the development of a single-float amphibian gear, interchangeable with the seaplane float of the Vought Corsair. To navigate a single-seater without radio out of sight of the carrier, to engage in combat and then return to a pin-point contact with a roving carrier, demanded real skill. In order to provide some sort of homing device, our radio officer, Gordon Rowe, strung a loop of wires between the wings of a Corsair, thus utilizing the loop-antenna feature, then common in home radio sets. Rowe’s device, antedating radar, was intended to avoid the possible loss of precious pilots and planes but it also made the Corsair available as a liaison plane for fighter tactics. With a good carrier-based amphibian we could extend our control of combat units and, at the same time, release them for safe long-range operations. To gain experience from the Hawaiian cruise, Admiral Reeves felt the _Langley_ should operate at least two eighteen-plane fighter squadrons as dive bombers together with six Vought Corsair two-seaters for scouting, rescue, and radio liaison. While the _Langley_, with the space available in her vast, empty coal bunkers, could easily provide ample hangar space and crew’s quarters, the restricted area of her flight deck and the limited capacity of her plane elevator introduced serious limitations. How to spot forty-two airplanes on an area believed by _Langley_ officers to be adequate for but twelve was something of a problem. While working on this, I proceeded on another project close to my heart, a recommendation from FLEET AIR for a long-term development and procurement program that would conform to the one I knew to be under way in BUAERO. If we could eliminate some of the local partisanship that frequently obscured the fundamentals of such problems, we might facilitate engineering progress. When I submitted my schedule to the admiral he approved all of it save one critical item, the construction of an experimental two-seat fighter. The idea had originated in World War I on the Western Front, where the classic form of attack had been a dive out of the sun onto the enemy’s tail, to shoot him down when he wasn’t looking. Perhaps a tail gunner might guard a pilot from such surprise, but Admiral Reeves would have none of the idea. He thought an alert fighter pilot could do the job by twisting his neck. If he had to lug an extra gun and tail gunner, he would impair the combat performance of his airplane. Besides, during maneuvers, no rear gunner could serve a gun. This was no snap judgment on his part; he had had Wagner try it out during tactical exercises, using Voughts to simulate two-seat fighters. In his judgment there could be no such thing as a two-seat “fighter.”