Word: fleetly
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...last week Virginia's Governor James H. Price, Norfolk's Mayor John A. Gurkin, with assorted State and local dignitaries, boarded the flagship California to welcome the U. S. Fleet to Virginia waters. Then they went ashore for a big civic luncheon. In mid-meal came a message from Washington. The officials gaped at their honor guest, Admiral Edward C. ("Old Man") Kalbfus. There was no longer much point in greeting the Fleet. Franklin Roosevelt (through Secretary of the Navy Claude Augustus Swanson) had ordered most of it back to the Pacific...
...save the highest of the high command were as much surprised as the lowliest sailor out with his girl. Admiral Claude C. Bloch, Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet, after a conference in Washington, was on leave at Annapolis. In a Manhattan theatre, during the 2,284th performance of Tobacco Road, a voice from the stage advised all U. S. sailors in the house to get back to their ships. While 40-odd obeyed, the audience stood, cheered, wondered...
...Norfolk, the Fleet's holiday mood changed to one of anxious preparation. Fueling started at emergency speed to fill all the Fleet's tanks and bunkers in three days instead of the normal twelve. Guessing that they might be bound much farther west than California, perhaps to Pearl Harbor or beyond, commissary officers laid in for their crews a six-week supply of fresh milk, fresh vegetables, including tons of spinach. And orders were to unship all old ammunition, take aboard new. Gunners knowingly noticed that the new projectiles for their big guns were colored differently from target...
What Franklin Roosevelt had done was order the Battle Fleet-the fighting unit of the whole U. S. Fleet-back to its "normal operating areas" in the Pacific. But he had left in the Atlantic (and for the New York World's Fair) much more than the small Atlantic Squadron normally on eastern duty. By the order, four battleships, twelve cruisers, 23 destroyers, two aircraft carriers, six submarines would stay behind. Westward were to go eight battleships, 15 cruisers, 43 destroyers, three aircraft carriers, 20 auxiliaries...
This disposal of U. S. seapower was cause for thought by Admiral William Daniel Leahy and others of the Navy's high command. As Chief of Naval Operations, William Leahy has a profound feeling for the unity of the Fleet, a conviction that its main strength should ever be concentrated and ready for concerted movement to a threatened point...