Lexington (CV 16) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 10 text:

each fragment is the image of the whole and in the combat gamble of life and death a tiny fragment of shrapnel can snuff out the aspirations, the ideals, and the life of the boy who had just become a man, with the same finality as an atomic bomb. The terror of the atomic bomb is the terror of war . . . the monstrous multiplying factor of death. One of the several fine photographers in my photographic unit, Lt. Victor Iorgensen, was with me on the carrier U .S .S . Lexington for this operation. We usually photographed independently and in different parts of the ship but on occasion we worked together, alternating as cameraman and helper. On some of the interiors he worked the camera and I held the lights, then I would shoot the pictures and he would handle the Hash bulbs. My own photographs in the book are supplemented by some of Vic's, some we made together, and a few by air-crewmen and photographer's mates with the task force. On some shots I used a Kao aerial camera, I also used a Speed Graphic and an Ikonta, but most of my photographs were made with a Medalist camera. Vic's favorite camera was a Rolli- flex. The occasional cropping on some of the pictures as they appear here was to conform with Lt. Garrison's overall plan in the design of the book. The footage for the Naval Aviation film project referred to in the text was later made into a great feature motion picture by Louis De Rochemont under the aegis of Twentieth Century-Fox and went out to the world as The Fighting Lady. Some of the finest footage in the film was shot during this operation by another of my young officers, Lt. Comdr. Dwight Long, working on the U.S.S. Yorktown, and our film cameramen on other ships of the task force. To Rear Admiral I. G. Clark, who was then Captain of the Yorktown, goes a special salute for the great way he backed up our photographic projects. The skipper of the Yorktown made The Fighting Lady possible. For my days on the Lexington, I am grateful for the warm cordiality extended to me by Rear Admiral Felix Stump, then skipper, who later furthered a distinguished career as flag oflicer in command of a victorious carrier division at Leyte Gulf. To the Exec, who later as Captain Bennet l V1

Page 9 text:

THEN AND NOW 7!1-6 dzvwei as an instrument for waging war and as an historian in recording the war. Carried in planes flying over enemy territory it becomes the eyes of the military planning staff and is considered a reliable-and is sometimes the only accurate-means of obtaining informa- tion. An army deprived of aerial photography would be like a blindfolded prize fighter in the ring. When military plans go into operation, combat photographs made on the ground and from the air record without emotion or prejudice what the lens saw. This accurate and speedily recorded instant is of immediate and permanent historical value. Following an unsuccessful attack on our carrier, the U .S.S. Lexington, by three enemy torpedo planes, there was considerable variation in the descriptions of just what happened and how by competent officers who had observed the attack. Later, when the photographs that were made on our ship and other ships in the task group were assembled and studied, it was found that most of these eye-witness reports were inaccurate. When a report from the Pacific reached the Navy Depart- ment that carrier planes had sunk the japanese super-battleship Yamato, some kept on saying Yes. maybe, until the photographs of the action arrived. ln addition to serving the military forces the combat photographs vividly supplement written reports that serve the press and through them the people of the nation. No event in human history has had as many cameras looking it over as VVorld VV ar ll. lt was not a centrally planned or organized project but by the sheer force of their numbers and their eager. reckless enthusiasm combat cameramen piled up the vast and ponderous mass of photographic documents now stacked away in boxes and filed in cabinets. lt will take decades to find and unravel the tactical and the human stories they contain. ln the great overall image of the war this book represents only a tiny, tiny fragment. ln a sense Y , M 1,1 -, .

Page 11 text:

Wright commissioned and skippered the carrier Sicily, and to all the ship's officers, the airmen and the crew, a warm salute from their oldest shipmate. I shall never cease to appreciate and Wonder at the courage of Vice Admiral A. W. Radford and of Artemus Gates, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, for taking me into the Navy. We will soon be celebrating the second anniversary of V-I Day, and almost four years have passed since the happenings recorded in this log. I can assume that the Nation's Flag was flying proudly in the breeze when the wounded Lex was leaving the battle area . . . yet I do not remember having noticed it at the time or having heard anyone else mention it. I do remember the Stars and Stripes draped over the bodies of our dead . . . remember how the flags flattened, fluttered, and flapped as the canvas bundles slid away and hurtled down into the water. I remember the smile and nod of the head from a pilot up in the cockpit of his plane about to take off . . . remember the long talk I had with him and hisheartwarming dreams and visions of the future just before he took off . . . and never came back. The memories of the infernal noise of gunfire, of tracer shell patterns in the sky, of flaming planes plunging into the sea in dramatic explosions-these seem remote and unreal, but the memory of bulldozers nosing the volcanic ash over the long rows of canvas-wrapped bodies of Marines on Iwo lima remains a starkly clear and stifling reality. There are some voices that are now talking glibly of the next war . . . here in our garden humming birds dive and zoom over long rows of blue and purple and white delphinium . . . Ridgejfeld, Conrzcfczficut, 4 Iuly 1947 V11