Franklin (CV 13) - Naval Cruise Book

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Comdr. Joe Taylor, Air Officer until Dec. 1944; Executive Officer Dec. ' 44 to June. 1945, ivatches the planes come in, from Flight Deck Control captain. The Air Department is to its ninety planes what the plane captain is to his one. With Comdr. Joe Taylor at the head of its fifty officers and twelve hundred men, the Air Department was the reason why Big Ben was in exist- ence; the reason behind all the other frantic activities which were readying her for combat. All the intricate construc- tion, all of the master plan, led up to that moment when the command comes: Pilots, man your planes! ' It was then, and only then, that an aircraft carrier became a fight ' inff force, an element in actual warfare. o The Air Department had its divisions, and what divisions! V-One, flight deck: arresting gear and barrier men must be quick of hand and true of eye. Misjudgment can be fatal to plane and crew. The eight-man teams of plane- pushers braved the menace of whirling props in the half- light of dawn to pull the chocks and lower the wings; they shuffled and reshuffled planes from dawn to dusk that the Strikes might leave on time. A few minutes delay and re- turning gasless aircraft might be forced to crash in the sea. The catapult crews forward, under Lt. M. C. Woodburn, must be able to fire a dozen fighters into the air in a few minutes to meet the threat of approaching bombers. V-Two. on the hangar deck, was composed of mechanics and metalsmiths of superb skill; men to whom replacing a damaged wing was a minor operation. V-Three, the operations section, had yeomen and admin- istrators who ])lowed through the paper work and passed on the Air Officer ' s commands. V-Four, the division for combat information, was most complex of all. Charged with responsibility for all radars and radios on ship and planes, it also supervised every sur- face lookout, the aerological department, the photographers and the recognition officers. Its fighter director team of a hundred radarmen and their officers under Lt. Comdr. Bob Bruning would be Big Ben ' s first line of defense. Some day. when enemy planes would flicker on the radar screens, fighters of the combat air patrol would roar off to intercept, guided by vectors radioed from Combat Information Cen- ter — CIC — where Lt. Jim Griswold and his tense teams crouched over their plotting tables. V-Five, the service division, had its life-breath given it by Chief Otis Lee Corbett, a son of the old South, who died in action off Kyushu. It dispensed the bombs, the machine gun bullets, the high-octane gasoline and torpedoes, because an aircraft carrier, as well as being a floating and movable airfield, must also be a service station of wide variety. And . . . V-Six. the squadrons: combat air crewmen for all planes; lads with the silver wings that testified they were aerial gunners; others with the golden wings of pilots. Most General storekeepers in their ' ' No cash — you carry ' ' store on the Fourth Deck. STANDING: F. Melvin; C. Delello; Gene Levine; C. L. McDuffie. SECOND ROW: Robert Strieker; Charles Russell; Leo Smolinski; Leroy I ' ancl. top: Billy Stribling; Manny Solomon; David Lashinsky The outfitlin ' est supply officer in the Navy! Com-dr. H. S. Cone, (.SO, JJSN, re-outfitted the battleship Nevada after Pearl Harbor, set a record on Big Ben. and left the ship only to outfit something bigger — the super-carrier Midway.

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A Hellcat ' s pliine captain, ivary oj the prop, stands by with a nheel chock vise. Mailman Kaymond T. Lorentz, with his five helpers, would he the most important men ahoard ship as letters he- gan to come and go. The printer ' s work was never quite finished and the deht due Chief Raymond D. Blair for his unselfish devotion to the ship ' s paper will never he re- paid — Chief Blair was killed in action. Under Comdr. Cone, the Supply Department had many activities. There were more than three thousand tons of groceries to fill Big Ben ' s larders to he ordered and stored ahoard! there was government insurance to sell; payrolls must he met — and were. The pencil-pushing storekeepers checked and accounted for every last item and penny. The Commissary Section hrought aboard the flour, sugar and other stores from freight cars on the dock. The Disbursing Section called S50,000 an average payday; hit a bumper record of S750,000 when Big Ben pulled into Bremerton, handling seven and a half million dollars in the first III months of service. The Aviation storekeepers ran their own department store. All of those sections roinjiosed the S-()ne Division. S-Tvvo Division was made up of steward s males, cooks, bakers, and laundry men. These .sound like lunndruin tasks, hut every man had a battle station — passing powder, keep- ing watch on the guns, on repair parties. A task is not humble or menial when a man is at his battle station for many hours through the night, then passes food or clean clothing to his shipmates all day — and still grins. To every plane on a carrier comes a lad to be its constant guardian and protector. This man is not an officer, but is called a captain — a plane captain. And while he does not have stripes of gold on his sleeves or golden wings on his chest, he loves his plane just as surely, he sacrifices himself just as uncomplainingly, as only a real Captain could. He boasts of her deeds, he sorrows in her hurts; he is the last to touch her before she roars down the deck, the gladdest to greet her when she lands aboard. His only duty is his plane. i ' o tear in her sleek fabric, no rip in her tires or broken cable to her radio must ever mar her performance. Lack of gas, lack of bullets, or faulty lubrication must never make her the prey of crafty Zeke or Jaj) AA, or the victim of a crash landing at sea. In his leisure hours he polishes her gleaming skin; he sleeps beneath her folded wings, or on the cushions of her cockpit. In the anxious hours, while gunners stand tense and the combat air patrol is busy just over the edge of the sea, many of the quiet little knot of men sweating it out by Combat Information Center are plane captains. The story of the Wx Department is the story of the plane ' s

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Big Ben puts to sea the first time. February 2Ist, 1944 of these were now with the planes at the Naval Air Station. Oceana, Virginia — nearly every man a volunteer from some shore station. There will be more about them . . . much more. Tension was mounting, activity was increasing throughout the vast and impatient bulk of Big Ben when, on February 21st, all these preparations began to be translated, for the first time, into real meaning — for it was on that day that she was eased gently into Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay. De- serted by the last of the puffing tugs and left to rely on the power of her own giant engines. Big Ben was on her own. It was not time to steam straight for the Pacific. Much was yet to be done; trial runs, gunnery practice, special tests, and the gruelling carrier landing qualifications which must be undergone for Ah Group Thirteen. The first flight quarters sounded February 27th, a mo- ment more historic and significant than any man on Big Ben realized that day on Chesapeake Bay. This time, all hands watched with awe as the divisions of the Air Department went about their then-mysterious business and Comdr. Joe Taylor brought his Avenger to rest on the deck, catching the second wire with its tailhook. Tliis was Big Ben ' s first landing! Warplanes would roll down that flight deck and land again more than nine thousand times during her com- bat service.