Suddenly his face brightened as he said with a smile, “Hell, we won’t secede from the Navy. If we are half as good as we think we are, we’ll take it over!” Years later, when “Duke” Ramsey, Forrest Sherman, and Arthur Radford, some of his “boys,” occupied the seats of the mighty, I recalled this comment. Next morning, while the admiral testified at the hearings, I sat at my desk in the Engine Section, trying to concentrate on neglected paper work. But up there in that committee room, decisive events were taking place. The admiral was not impressive on the witness stand of a formal hearing; his strength lay in the give and take of the informal conference. He had little patience with the measured logic of a man like Fred Rentschler; though his own conclusions might derive from similar processes, his brain acted like chain lightning. What looked like snap judgment might have been thought through, but he was too impatient to develop the process for others. Now he would be sitting up there before a solemn board, facing a press table of partisan commentators sold on the Mitchell doctrine, and surrounded by all the high dignitaries of the Navy Department, from Secretary Wilbur and Admiral Hughes, the Chief of Naval Operations, down to Bureau chiefs like himself, most of whom feared he might sell out the Navy and go over to the Mitchell side. For this had been a trying period for the Navy. Following the Armistice, public opinion had favored the idea of peace through disarmament and the Limitation of Arms Conference had all but emasculated the service. Then the spectacular air attacks engineered by General Mitchell had put the Navy further on the defensive. No one in the high command had developed a flair for public relations and now with Billy Mitchell on the offensive, the Navy had its back against the wall. Much of the enmity aroused by Mitchell’s attack now turned inward to BUAERO and even Admiral Moffett. Yet up there before the Morrow Board, if the Old Man would just stick to his testimony as we had written it and not start ad-libbing, he would come out all right. If, however, he deviated it, some hawk like Congressman Carl Vinson, of Georgia, one of the best informed men in Congress, would dive on him at terminal speed. Then, a little before noon, the admiral himself walked into the Engine Section and slumped down in his chair. All jauntiness was gone; he looked tired. “They tell me I made a mess of it,” he said simply. It seemed that when he had taken his stand against the independent air force, Secretary Wilbur and others smiled their relief. The newspaper men looked let down. Then on the subject of the air corps, when Congressman Vinson cross-questioned him, he had, as an afterthought, stated that his Bureau should have control of aviation personnel and operations as well as matériel. Quick as a flash, Vinson shot back, “So you do believe in the air corps after all!”