After a while, dark figures began stirring among the parked airplanes, and the blue lights winked on—flashlights screened by paper torn from packages of absorbent cotton, loaned by the sick bay. Still later, the staccato bark of an engine and red flashes from its short exhaust stacks signaled all mechanics to start their engines. By now the night air was cold and we shivered as we stood around on the bridge, looking down on an expanse of exhaust flames. Ship’s officers had taken their stations, their telephone helmets on their heads. Pete Mitscher and Ken Whiting stood in the wings of the bridge. The roar of engines swelled then ceased as suddenly as it had started. Without hearing the order, we knew what that meant: “Pilots, man your planes.” The radio messenger handed me a signal blank. It was a plain-English broadcast from the enemy cruiser _Detroit_. Dick White was on the air, in his play-by-play account. “_Saratoga_ has started all aircraft engines,” it began. “What a sight! A thousand tongues of red fire from their exhausts! I have turned on searchlights and am firing pyrotechnics to indicate present position. Can’t someone stop this? It would be a pity, but we can’t let them get away with this kind of murder.” Over the bow roared Skinny Wick in the first airplane, her running lights on. She turned toward Panama. Now they were getting off at about ten-second intervals. They were rendezvousing on the course to the Canal. Eighteen had joined up. Off went their lights! They were going in darkened. Now a second group had joined up and turned out its lights. There went the torpedo planes. They were forming in two nine-plane groups. One eighteen-plane fighter squadron would escort each nine-plane bomber division. Now they’d all disappeared. There came the last group, twelve in all—Griffen’s dive bombers. Now they were all gone. The signalman handed me an intercept from Dick White. “It’s magnificent. I’ve never seen such precision. It’s breathtaking.” With that he signed off. Each of the fighters was a potential 500-pound dive bomber and if unopposed would dive immediately onto the locks. Afterward he would climb back to his station and protect the heavy bombers on their level-bombing run. Even the two-seaters were potential dive bombers, and if unopposed would also go in to bomb. Thus we had three detachments, timing their approaches so as to appear over the defending observation posts simultaneously in order to throw the defenses into confusion. After the bombers had delivered their attacks and started back to the _Big Sara_, the fighter pilots would remain behind to harass the Army pursuit. With their air-cooled fighters they could sit on top of the Army liquid-cooled jobs, watch them climb below in a futile effort to gain altitude, and finally thumb their noses, as the enemy lost flying speed and spun out of control.