Admiral Pratt, his blouse unbuttoned to reveal an old-fashioned stiff-bosomed white shirt, received us in his cabin. Seated behind the usual billiard-cloth-covered table, he inquired courteously in his State-of-Maine accent to what he owed this visit from so distinguished a group. To Admiral Reeves’s inquiry whether Admiral Pratt had read our estimate of the situation for the fleet problem, the commander in chief replied in the negative; he had left the matter in the hands of his assistant chief of staff. His earlier rejection of our big idea had been doubly disappointing because we respected him as a sailorman of the old school and a man highly regarded as a strategist and tactician. With the news that he had not known of our proposal, our hopes began to revive. Admiral Reeves swept in his outline with deft strokes: The _Saratoga_ would launch her aircraft two hours before dawn from a point some 150 miles away from the Canal. To reach that point where she would rendezvous with Admiral Pratt’s battleships, the _Saratoga_ would steam all night at 30 knots, accompanied only by the _Omaha_, her plane guard. In the 10 hours of darkness between sunset and the launching time, the _Saratoga_ would cover 300 miles. This, added to the 150-mile launching range, would put her 450 miles from Panama the night before the attack. During the previous day she would have run 360 miles more, and these distances were such that the enemy could hardly scout the possible areas of approach with any certainty of discovering the _Saratoga_. There was an excellent chance that we might get in undetected. Admiral Pratt listened carefully and then put his finger on the one weak spot. He feared that if we launched aircraft that far at sea and lost even a single pilot, the reaction of public opinion at home might be most unfavorable. Admiral Reeves replied that when he had offered the same objection I had produced the surprising record of the year’s operations. Using the new equipment provided by BUAERO we had gone through a full year without mechanical failure over the sea. Since we were drilling constantly to avoid cockpit failures it was reasonable to expect that we would have a similarly clean record off Panama. Satisfied by the logic of this, Admiral Pratt began to warm to the whole idea. He suggested that, while it was now too late to change the orders all ready issued, this very fact might be converted to our advantage. The problem could be made a better exercise if we kept the new plan a secret among ourselves while he arranged later to spring a sudden change of orders on his fleet. He proposed to stop the formation somewhere along the west coast of Mexico, send out new orders by guard boat, release the _Saratoga_ for her wide southerly detour, and, incidentally, profit by the element of surprise inherent in radio silence. When COMAIRONS and his staff departed the flagship, we walked on air.