Lexington (CV 16) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 50 text:

A - LAST PLANE IS OEF-SPGTTER NSITS ON THE BREEZE 38

Page 49 text:

SOMETHING THAT WILL GO UPSTAIKD

Page 51 text:

WHEEL CHOCKS ARE CARRIED EORXVARD READY FOR RETURNING PLANES Affection and admiration for the airmen grow deeper each day. Anxiety when they take off, fear for them when they land, I cannot brush aside. I see them take ofl and return again and again day after day, and yet a strange notion persists that this whole thing is impossible. There is a cool impersonal dignity about a pilot seated in the cockpit of his plane, something of the tight alertness of a hawk, and the smooth hard force lines of a bullet about that helmeted head on which eyes and heart focus so sharply. Brancusi might well be the sculptor to create an image in polished steel, an abstraction and a symbol, of this Fighter birdman. Twelve VF-16 fighter planes are now out on combat patrol, fast, tough Grumman flying machines . . . twelve lighter pilots, a trained combat team, alert, keen, itching for a chance to mix it up, shoot it out with the damn Zeros or uZel4es. 39