Contrary to naval custom we sought to build up the admiral and play ourselves down. For instance, after having prepared an order for the Old Man’s signature, we would urge him to call a conference of squadron commanders to indoctrinate them in his plan. A fine speaker, one possessed of unusual knowledge of military history, of policy, strategy, and tactics, he often held us spellbound by his entertaining and instructive discourses spiced by keen wit. Wagner and I would grasp every favorable occasion to suggest a commendatory signal to a subordinate who had distinguished himself; similarly we saw to it that the admiral got word of any complimentary comment from his subordinates. In other words, we made it our first order of business to develop loyalty both ways—up and down. The time soon came when a squadron commander remarked, “If Bull Reeves told us to fly into the side of a mountain, we’d fly—and likely come out safe on the other side!” We also gave critical attention to our own performance of staff functions stressing especially our communications procedures and techniques. On the matériel side we took extreme pains to train our “mechs” and to emphasize the importance of preventive engineering. Under this doctrine, it became the task of the maintenance crews to discover incipient failures and correct them before they could induce forced landings or other accident. Having good, sound, new equipment to start with, we were able to reduce mechanical failures almost to the vanishing point and to abolish them entirely from over-water operations. On the important morale side, Frank Wagner was the key to success. Intimately acquainted with the younger pilots as he was, and an active participant in their social affairs, Frank could watch their reactions and recommend actions designed to keep them all at a high pitch of enthusiasm. One day, after we had been pressing hard toward perfection, Frank came to me with a long face; he feared the kids were getting stale. He thought we should secure all flying for several days and actually order the pilots off the station and away from their jobs. When we went in to see the admiral, concealing our misgivings as to this revolutionary idea, the Old Man threw back his head and parted his beard in a laugh that must have carried clear down to the _Langley_ dock. “Go to it!” he shouted. “And Wagner,” he added, “a little visit across the Mexican border to Tijauna might help you get a smile back on your own face.”