TWENTY-FIVE. An Unfavorable Climate 224 TWENTY-SIX. A Spark Is Struck 229 TWENTY-SEVEN. For What Is a Man Profited? 237 TWENTY-EIGHT. Off the Beam 247 TWENTY-NINE. For Survival 260 THIRTY. Toward Public Inquiry 271 THIRTY-ONE. Before the Bar of Public Opinion 290 THIRTY-TWO. The Hand on the Stick 296 INDEX. 311 SLIPSTREAM CHAPTER ONE It’s Anybody’s Fight It was a day in March of 1924 when I first stepped across the threshold of the anteroom to the office of Rear Adm. William Adger Moffett, Chief of the new Bureau of Aeronautics in the Navy Department at Washington. The anteroom lay at the center of the extreme after end of the top deck of the third wing of the temporary frame structure which then housed, and in fact still houses, the Navy Department. Through the windows I could see the greening lawns of the Mall and the budding cherry blossoms along the rim of the Tidal Basin. Directly below, the Reflecting Pool, a square-cut sapphire, mirrored the tip of the Washington Monument and the cottony clouds of a blustery day. I handed my orders to the admiral’s secretary and, as she disappeared through a door to the left, I glanced around. To the right of the secretary’s desk, a latticed, swinging half door of the type once common to saloons of the preprohibition era bore a gilt-lettered sign reading “Assistant Chief of Bureau.” To the left, on a similar door, the letters spelled “Chief of Bureau.” As it swung open, the secretary waved me toward a stiff-backed chair and said, “The admiral will see you in a few minutes, sir.” Lifting my sword off its hook, I stripped the white lisle gloves from my hands, dusted a bit of lint off my two and a half gilt stripes, and sat down in the chair. Most young officers bearing such orders as mine would have thrilled at the thought of duty in Washington, but I was vaguely uneasy. That sword, standing on the tip of its scabbard between my knees, seemed, in a way, to point up my doubts. Forged into its blade was a quotation from one of Teddy Roosevelt’s slogans, “The only shots that count are the shots that hit.” Judged by that standard, I had not scored too well since graduation from Annapolis in 1908. Having set out on a career in gunnery, I had let myself be diverted from it.