Word: fleetly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
High above the battleship New Mexico still floated the four-starred flag of the CINCUS. And below decks, for the next five days, tall, slow-spoken Admiral James Otto Richardson, Commander in Chief U. S. Fleet, worked at his desk, writing, reading, conferring. At week's end the blue flag came down and the CINCUS, in mufti, went over the side. That day he took a plane for Washington, this week sat down to talk with Secretary of the Navy Frank William Knox...
...each other they kept to themselves. They had plenty to talk about. Across the Pacific the clouds massed darkly. Japan, junior member of the Axis, was talking of war if the U. S. didn't like her idea of running the Orient (see p. 40). What goat-faced Fleet Admiral Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi had up his Oriental sleeve, neither Frank Knox nor Jo Richardson knew. But Frank Knox had talked tough too, had said that "if a fight is forced upon us we shall be ready." At week's end he called up the naval reserve...
Theoretically, the Fleet is always ready, but for 1940 warfare its readiness had qualifications. On the credit side, the Fleet had never before had the top-flight personnel that now man its ships. A majority of its enlisted men are high-school graduates. Its officers are well educated, carefully selected, bear down hard on training. It has a substantial sprinkling of oldtime sailormen, does a crack job of gunnery, engineering, flying, seamanship. In tonnage and gun power it is superior to anything Japan can put on the seas...
...debit side, the Navy was undermanned by 15%. Jo Richardson needed men faster than the training stations can turn them out. Although officers say that new Navy men learn in three months what took oldtimers three years, the Fleet needs more training-for its gun crews, its engineering forces, even for the hard-eyed, diligent young officers that Navy expansion promoted to the command of battleship and cruiser gun turrets long before their time. With an expansion of 70% ahead of it for the two-ocean Navy, it will need intensive training for a long time to come...
...kind of national virtue. The British were last week more sure than ever that the favorite vessel of the Axis, the airplane, was not necessarily superior to the proud conveyance of Drake, Nelson, Jellicoe. They were sure that Britain could not be brought to her knees until her Fleet was put out of action. And they were also sure that Adolf Hitler, who was mighty sick the first time he ever went to sea, and Benito Mussolini, who looks his most imposing pitching hay, were not the men to turn that trick on any body of water...