Early Work in Aviation 3 1 



them until they were right down on us. It made me reaHze then that they could 

 fly over 100 miles to get to us and bomb us, and the battleships couldn't reach 

 that far with a gun. 



It seems that dive bombing, as a technique, was pretty much an American invention and 

 contribution. 



It was entirely. 



The Germans get so much credit for it in the early part of World War II. Dive bombing, I 

 think, was also practiced here at Dahlgren. 



We had to do a lot of it here while I was Officer in Charge of the Air Detail. In 

 addition to bombing with the horizontal bombsights like the Norden MARK 

 1 1 and the MARK 15, we were trying to bring out a dive-bombing sight. Nor- 

 den was also bringing out a dive-bombing sight, but that came here for tests 

 after I had gone. 



Now let's go back a little. You flew off LANGLEY? 



No, I didn't fly off LANGLEY. It was LEXINGTON. 



The first LEXINGTON. Was that a converted cruiser? 



No, a converted battle cruiser — LEXINGTON and SARATOGA. They took 

 two battle cruiser hulls and just converted them into carriers. 



These were LEXINGTON and SARATOGA that were serving in the Pacific. 

 That's right — LEXINGTON was lost at the Coral Sea battle. 



/ interrupted you earlier when you were talking about dive bombing. When did you take 

 flight training? You mentioned that after Annapolis you went into naval gunnery. 



After I became interested in flying, I got rides whenever I could with any 

 aviator that was available. This included catapulting off a ship. I actually took 

 flight training in the fall of 1930 in Pensacola, Florida. 



At that time, was it a short duration of training or fairly long? 

 About the same as right now. 



Were the aircraft you were training in pretty much World War I vintage? 



No, the primary trainers were built just for that purpose, and then before we 

 finished at Pensacola we were put in modern airplanes for awhile — the ones 

 that were being used aboard ship at that time. 



