Lexington (CV 16) - Naval Cruise Book

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,if Wim. ,W i ll -ev' 1T'S PILOTS, MAN YOUR PLANES! AS ADDITIONAL TORPEDO BOMBERS AND FIGHTERS

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K We send up new flights of search and patrol planes, bring in the earlier Hights. While our bombers are taking off, I notice a stewardls mate in the gallery alongside the Hight deck watching these takeoffs. Moving up next to him, I tell him I bet a lot of people back in the States would be willing to pay a hundred dollars for the grandstand seats he and I have here on the Lex. He looks a little puzzled until I add, This is a better show than a prizefightf' then he grins, says, Oh! Yas sir, yas sir, it shore is. I move on across the deck, looking back, notice he has disappeared, but in a few minutes he is there again . . . with six of his mates to see the show. During these past weeks when watching planes go thundering along the deck, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the nailed-down-to-the-deck look in the closeup photographs of such takeoffs. The usual fast shutter speed in freezing the motion destroys the basic reality of the subject. This afternoon instead of the usual zooth to 4ooth of a second, I try exposures ranging between Ifzgth and Ifgth of a second, using a filter and appropriate diaphragm settings. The photograph of the Hellcat on pages I I6 and 1 I7 was made with the shutter set for Ifroth of a second. While making this series of exposures, the Exec comes along and we have a short question and answer session about the controversial business of photographing motion. We drift into gen- eralities about photography, painting, art. He tells about a visit Mrs. Wright and he once made to Alfred Stieglitz's American Place to see an exhibition of Iohn Marin,s watercolors: I tell him a few personal anecdotes about Marin and about some watercolors he painted long, long ago in my garden at Voulangis, France. B. W. says that someday he hopes to own a Marin watercolor. Our conversation is regularly interrupted as one plane after another roars past, slaps us with the backwash of its air stream, and zooms up into the sky. Each thundering plane emphasizes the contrast between the dynamic intensity of the moment here, and the dream-like memories of other places . . . another time . . . another life . . . makes it seem like a cockeyed war in a cockeyed world in which realities are piling up moments and images as fantastic and incongruous as those dished out by the surrealists.

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