The fleet sailed on schedule, maneuvering down along the Mexican coast, with the _Saratoga_ rehearsing her part with predawn take-offs and rendezvous. At the time we had no night-flying equipment and had done little night flying; but we had discipline, which was better than any equipment. Then one day the fleet flag made a signal for the fleet to stop and send boats for mail. When we opened our orders we found that Admiral Pratt had assigned the _Omaha_ to us as _Saratoga’s_ plane guard, but instead of transferring the DESRONS flag to a destroyer, had left Admiral Senn, Harold Stark, and all the staff on board. As the _Omaha_, lifting in the swell, ranged up alongside the _Saratoga_, Admiral Senn, although Admiral Reeves’s senior, hailed the _Big Sara_ from his bridge by megaphone. “What do you want me to do, Bull?” he inquired. Now we began working our speed up to twenty knots, proceeding in company with the _Omaha_ leading the way on our epoch-making wide southerly detour. And as the _Big Sara’s_ decks trembled under the thrust of her great screws, we on COMAIRONS’ staff began to feel a tremor around our hearts. Looking back into the vessel’s boiling wake we could see the churnings of white water as the vast power of her great motors drove her forward; a portion of the energy went into slip, but by far the largest part of it went into effective forward thrust. In that turbulence we could visualize what went on quite unseen in the slipstream of aviation, that remorseless force which was driving us at such breathtaking speed. From our lofty perch on the flag bridge we could count sixty-six airplanes trembling there in the breeze that swept across the deck straining them against their lashings and wheel chocks. Out in front stood thirty-six Boeing fighters with air-cooled radial engines, airplanes we had not dreamed about five years earlier when I had sat in the anteroom off Admiral Moffett’s office in BUAERO. Behind the fighters ranged twelve Vought Corsair scouts, conceived and constructed by Chance Vought, who had written the prescription for the Pratt and Whitney Wasp. Back on the fantail, their biplane wings folded, nested eighteen Martin T4M torpedo-bomber scouts, three-seaters built around the Pratt and Whitney Hornet, an engine that even George Mead, who had created it, had solemnly stated in writing was “quite impossible.”