Whereas on the _Langley_ COMAIRONS staff had perched under the flight-deck ramp in temporary cubby holes hung as an afterthought out over the stern, on the “_Big Lex_” the chief of staff rated a living room, bedroom, and bath, a sumptuous suite in which I rattled around like a single die in a wardroom dice box. Messing as we did with the admiral in his big cabin, we luxuriated all the way back to San Diego. There, anchored in the Roads, we found big “_Sister Sara_” under the able command of Capt. John Halligan. Bull Reeves’s two-starred flag floated over the world’s most powerful carrier force, a smart outfit that already gave signs of great _esprit_ in the making. Meanwhile a number of new aircraft and new pilots had been assembling for the “summer concentration.” Our job now was to whip the force into shape for the next fleet operation less than a year away. Captain Towers turned over command of the _Langley_ to Capt. Arthur B. Cook, another good skipper, and now returned to BUAERO to become Admiral Moffett’s Assistant Chief. We hoped that the stresses and strains of the winter might not complicate our affairs, for we already had a tough problem to solve in the relationship between the carriers and their squadrons. The admiral held that the squadrons should base under him at San Diego and should operate under his command in the monthly fleet tactical exercises; some of the carrier officers, and singularly enough it was the naval aviators now acting as ship’s officers, and not the line officers at all, insisted that the squadrons should function with respect to the carriers just as a turret crew works on a battleship. Aside from the fact that it was impractical to base squadrons on carriers and train them there without keeping the carriers continuously at sea, the introduction of carrier skippers into the chain of command tended to slow down air operations. This was a conflict that raged even more bitterly as time went on and especially after Capt. E. J. King took over command of the _Lexington_. It was complicated by the _Langley_ incident and worse still by a political situation even then developing back in Washington. Some of the high brass had gone gunning for Admiral Moffett’s scalp—his term of office would expire in a year—and their candidate, as yet unbeknownst to Bull Reeves, was Rear Adm. Joseph M. Reeves. As the net of complications began to tighten about us, I chafed under them. To me it seemed that grown men ought to learn to bury their pet prejudices and to move ahead on the big ideas in an orderly and cooperative fashion. To Bull Reeves, an older, wiser, and always more philosophical man, these conflicts all seemed part of a plan that somehow produced the right answers where the apparently more orderly processes finally created planned disorder. CHAPTER FIFTEEN Creation of Strategic Concept