Franklin (CV 13) - Naval Cruise Book

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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.

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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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