In mid-November, the Essex received orders detaching the carrier from the Seventh Fleet and directing her to return to Norfolk, Virginia, via the Cape of Good Hope around the southern tip of South America. After a brief stop at Subic Bay to offload certain equipment and supplies in short supply in the western Pacific, the carrier bent on twenty-seven knots for her maximum sustained speed for the voyage home. As in the case with oil-fired ships, the carrier would have to make three refuelings en route. The first was in Ceylon, the second at Capetown, and the third at Rio de Janeiro. In each case, two nights were spent in these seaports to allow the crew to experience a liberty in these exotic places. The carrier arrived in its homeport of Jacksonville, Florida, on 15 December 1958, and VA-83 flew to NAS Oceana, having been away from home for a total of eleven months on what had started out to be a six-month cruise.
On this cruise, two of the four original squadron commanders had been killed in aircraft accidents involving landing on a carrier at night. VA-83 had been called upon to step into the breach, flying night fighter missions when the Banshees were grounded and continuing to fly at night in spite of the inadequacies of their aircraft and the primitive nature of electronic facilities aboard ship. This kind of experience was not atypical of the carrier cruises during the Cold War. The carriers were essential to the success of the forward strategy, and our potential adversaries had to be convinced of the carriers’ full capabilities. So the limits of both people and equipment were pushed to the extremes. Experienced leaders were lost to the pressures of the Cold War, but VA-83 was fortunate on this cruise. We brought everyone home.
8
The Pentagon, a Seaplane Tender, and Typhoons
In 1959 Washington, D.C., was the capital of the free world and the Pentagon was headquarters for the free-world military forces that were confronting the USSR and its Communist bloc allies in the Cold War. Within the Pentagon were the secretary of defense, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Staff (JS), and the four services, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. In those days, the commandant of the Marine Corps was not a full-fledged member of the JCS but attended all meetings and could vote only on matters directly affecting the Corps (in 2005 a Marine Corps general was appointed chairman of the JCS). In 1959, the chief of naval operations, the uniformed head of the Navy, was Adm. Arleigh Burke. Burke was CNO for three successive two-year terms, the only service chief to have been reappointed twice. His wisdom, energy, and accomplishments set him apart as an inspirational military leader.
Washington, D.C., is considered a required tour of duty for every aspiring naval officer. It was deemed almost impossible to be selected for flag rank without a tour of duty in the Pentagon or the Washington Navy Bureaus. The time to go was as a commander or fresh-caught captain. So in 1959, I was pleased to receive orders detaching me from command of Attack Squadron 83 after two years and sending me to the Pentagon. I was a commander at the time, with a wife and three children, and my father, Adm. James L. Holloway Jr., had retired as a four-star and was living quietly in Philadelphia. I make a point of this because there has often been a tacit presumption that my father was in a position to advance my career as I gained seniority in the Navy. On the contrary, as a retired officer he had little or no influence over his own future, much less mine.
I was detached from my squadron in May and ordered to report for duty in the Pentagon on the Air Weapon System Analysis Staff of Vice Adm. Robert B. Pirie, the deputy chief of naval operations for air warfare, or DCNO (Air). My first assignment was as all weather flight coordinator, developing improved equipment, tactics, and procedures for operating aircraft off carriers at night and in all weather conditions. Although I served in this position for only four months before being drafted as executive assistant to the deputy chief of naval operations for air, I did leave a modest legacy to naval aviation. At the annual All Weather Flight Conference at the Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, in 1959, I introduced a proposal that would influence the way carrier air operations would be conducted in the future. It was a concept based upon my experiences flying A4Ds at night in the fleet.
During and since World War II, aircraft returning to a carrier for landing would rendezvous over the ship in orbits at different altitudes depending upon aircraft type — fighters, dive bombers, torpedo planes — awaiting the signal for recovery. This signal would not occur until all of the planes scheduled to land had joined up in a mass formation over the carrier and all aircraft were accounted for. This seemed like a waste of time and fuel in the jet age. I remembered my own experience as a flight leader in Bombing Squadron 3 in the USS Kearsarge in 1947. Being the last squadron in the landing order, the SB2Cs had to circle the ship for as long as half an hour before commencing the letdown for landing. This was time that could have been more profitably used by conducting mission training rather than boring holes in the sky.
The proposed system gave each aircraft scheduled for the next recovery a specific time to be at the ramp, that is, a landing time. Then it was up to the pilot and the ship’s air controllers, working together, to have that plane at the ramp at the required time. Furthermore, instead of having one landing procedure for daylight operations and then an entirely separate procedure for night or bad weather, the doctrine called for all carrier recoveries to use the same flight procedures both night and day and under all conditions of weather. The purpose of this latter provision was to familiarize the pilots with the procedures that they would be using during the more difficult flying conditions. They would not be changing to a different procedure when landing conditions were unfavorable but would practice low-visibility procedures on every flight, without loss of flight time available for primary mission training. This procedure was adopted for standard use in the fleet but was replaced several years later to better adapt to the characteristics of the jet aircraft that were then entering the fleet in numbers.
DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR AIR WARFARE
In the late 1950s the DCNO (Air) was a very powerful position in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OpNav). Located in the Pentagon, DCNO (Air) had the responsibility for all of the aviation programs of the Navy: carriers, aircraft, people, and weapons. Management of aviation personnel in the Navy was something of a unique responsibility for a DCNO, as that responsibility had been assigned as a specific task of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. At that time virtually half of all personnel in the Navy were concerned with aviation in one capacity or another. The position of DCNO (Air) appeared on the Pentagon organization charts as OP-05, and that is how the office was familiarly referred to.
In 1958 the incumbent OP-05 was Adm. Robert Pirie. He was what was popularly known as one of the “Barons” because of the territory and the people in the Navy that he controlled. The other Barons were in charge of the submarine forces and the surface warfare component of the Navy. At this time, the aviators and the submariners were the only two branches of line officers who wore a warfare distinguishing insignia above the ribbons on their working and dress uniforms. The aviators wore gold wings and the submariners had their treasured dolphins. Later I had the pleasure and distinction of introducing the comparable surface warfare officer pin when I was CNO.