Word: skipperly
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Lieut. Commander Philip Torrey, skipper of the Essex' Air Group 9, was a brave man. But when the target was announced, he later recalled, "My first instinct was to jump overboard." On the first day at Truk, 127 land-based Jap planes were shot down, 77 more were bagged on the ground. On the second day, not one got off the ground. Two of the hardiest myths of the war in the Pacific had been exploded: 1) Truk was not impregnable; 2) in a contest with seaborne planes, land-based air power was no better than its planes...
Before dawn on Feb. 16, a date which will be ringed in red on many a Navy calendar, the carriers turned into the wind to launch planes. Mitscher had been almost as far as this before: he was skipper of the Hornet when she carried Doolittle's daring little squadron toward Tokyo. But in the intervening 34 months, America's seaborne air force had grown beyond recognition. Now, hundreds of planes circled the carriers as they formed up: for two simultaneous dawn strikes, there were (by Jap count) 300 planes in each attack group...
...cups that only two were fit for duty. The others were good-natured but persistent. They began to "molest" the SPARS. What the U.S. sailors did about it was not reported. But a civilian forcibly restrained a Canadian sailor from "molesting" a SPAR. At last the tug's skipper turned around and raced for shore...
Even among the brave, silent men of the submarine fleet, 38-year-old Commander Samuel D. Dealey was a hero. As skipper of the submarine Harder, he had won four Navy Crosses, two Presidential citations. General MacArthur had awarded him the D.S.C. (for reasons withheld because of security). His force commander had recommended him for the nation's highest award, the Medal of Honor...
...hours of Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S.S. Ward, a 23-year-old, four-piper destroyer, rolling back to Pearl Harbor from a routine patrol, picked up a startling report from a minesweeper: a mysterious object, possibly a submarine, had been detected in the darkness to the west. From the skipper's cabin, Lieut. William W. Outerbridge, nervously proud of his first full command, hurried out to direct a search. Finding nothing, he gave the order to secure from general quarters, went back to sleep...