CHAPTER 2

Lloyd M. Mustin

Born at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on July 30, 1911, Lloyd M. Mustin came into a distinguished family that had accomplished much in many fields, including naval. He would build on that naval tradition by rising through the ranks to retire as a vice admiral in 1971. Before passing away in 1999, he witnessed his first son Henry achieve that same rank. His grandson John would also earn his third star when he took command of the Navy Reserve in August 2020.

The Mustin line had French Huguenot and English roots. In 1795, George Mustin, his wife Mary Elizabeth, and six children came to Philadelphia from Devonport, England. In Philadelphia, they had three more children. Lloyd traced his lineage to one of these three, a John Mustin, who fathered John Jr., who in turn fathered Lloyd’s grandfather Thomas Jones Mustin.

Thomas would marry Ida Croskey who would bear him two sons. The first, Henry Croskey Mustin, came into the world on February 6, 1874. Henry grew to love his father, a man of vigor who delved into the Philadelphia textile industry. Tragically, the father died of pneumonia contracted when he took off his winter garments to warm 14-year-old Henry and his younger brother John when the three were stranded on a train in the middle of a January blizzard. Within three years Ida married William S. Lloyd, who built on the textile business, and more significantly, served as a devoted stepfather to the two boys. Henry and his brother John were well cared for, and Henry eventually paid homage to the man by naming his first son for him.¹

Lloyd’s naval heritage came from his well-known father and also from his mother’s lineage. Corinne Montague—the socialite who would eventually fall for a young naval officer stationed at the Washington Navy Yard—traced her ancestry to the Sinclair family of Scottish nobility. Arthur Sinclair IV was born around 1787 at Norfolk and was the first of Lloyd Mustin’s forebears to serve in the U.S. Navy, serving as a midshipman with Thomas Truxtun on Constellation during her 1799 triumph over L’Insurgente in the Quasi-War with France. By the time the War of 1812 came about, the now Lieutenant Sinclair received command of Argus and captured several British merchantmen. He finished the war on the Great Lakes, leading naval forces to several victories over the British.²

After the war, Sinclair returned to Norfolk, where he commanded the Navy Yard at Gosport and established “The Nautical School,” an institution that would serve as a predecessor to the U.S. Naval Academy. Sinclair married the only daughter of a Richard Kennon of the Continental Army, and Sally Kennon would deliver five children of which three were boys who also would serve in the Navy. The eldest boy, another Arthur, served in the Mexican–American War, participated in Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s expedition to Japan in the early 1850s, and commanded Vandalia during an adventurous cruise in the South Pacific in 1859.³

Arthur Sinclair V signed on with the Confederacy where he served on the ram Mississippi at New Orleans and later operated blockade runners. He vanished while embarked on the Lelia, lost in a storm on her maiden voyage from England.

His first son, Arthur Sinclair VI, also served the South, surviving engagements in both Merrimack (CSS Virginia) and Alabama. He would also father several children of whom the fourth, Lehia Sinclair, would become Lloyd’s grandmother. She married Walter Powhatan Montague of Baltimore and they would produce four children; the last, Corinne, would grow up to marry Henry.⁴

It was Henry who started the Mustin naval dynasty with his entry into the Naval Academy in 1892. A natural athlete who earned the nickname “Rum,” Henry was a four-letter man as a fencer, rower, track star, and football quarterback. He graduated in 1896 as a Passed Midshipmen and received orders to the armored cruiser New York. In the wake of the Maine explosion, Henry was assigned to support Capt. William T. Sampson’s Court of Inquiry that had been convened to look into the tragic explosion. Henry’s duties included surveying the wreck and drafting drawings of the remaining hulk for the Court’s evaluation.⁵

Again embarked in New York at the start of the Spanish–American War, he witnessed the demise of the Spanish flotilla during the battle of Santiago. Now an ensign, he eventually received orders to join the Asiatic Fleet in Manila. To get to the Philippines, he embarked as a division officer on the collier Scindia and made the long trip around South America and westward in company with the battleships Oregon and Iowa. Scindia broke down and had to be towed to Honolulu. Facing the prospect of heading to San Francisco for major repairs, Henry swapped jobs with an officer on the water-distilling ship Iris, which arrived at Manila on March 18, 1899. By this time the Philippine insurrection was challenging the American forces in the region and Henry longed to get into the action. By August he was reassigned to the flagship Oregon, which supported gunboats that were engaged in interdiction work. On the night of September 25, Henry swam ashore with Oregon crewmembers to successfully capture the insurgent steamboat Taaleno. Once in American hands, Henry worked feverishly to make the boat seaworthy. Henry would not command her, though. Instead, he received command of the gunboat Semar and found himself supporting numerous Army operations to put down the insurrection of Filipinos within the thousands of islands in the archipelago. In one operation, Henry grounded his small craft to enable his gunners to fire point-blank into enemy positions that threatened an Army landing. By year’s end, Army forces, supported by Semar and other naval units, seemed to be closing in on elusive insurgent leader Emilio Aguinaldo.⁶

However, Henry’s gunboat days were numbered. In March, he reported for duty on the new flagship, the armored cruiser Brooklyn. There he met Lt. William S. Sims, who would influence his career. After a few months in Brooklyn, Henry was transferred to the two-masted schooner Isle de Cuba, and the young naval officer again found himself supporting Army operations ashore into 1901. Finally, after two years of action in the Philippines, Henry received orders to the homeward-bound Newark.⁷

In September 1901, now Lt. (jg) Henry Mustin reported for duty with torpedo boats at the Norfolk Navy Yard, but he fell ill and needed two months to recuperate. Reassigned to the Naval Academy, he familiarized himself with the Holland, the Navy’s first submarine then stationed there.⁸ At the end of July 1902, he reported to the battleship Kearsarge, the flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron. Within months he qualified as a turret officer. During Kearsarge’s deployment to Europe in 1903, Henry had the opportunity to visit the Royal Navy’s Gunnery School at Whale Island where he witnessed the latest British advances in telescopic sights. Looking at the British design work, Henry felt confident that he could build a better mousetrap. Returning to the East Coast, Henry suddenly felt cursed to receive orders as executive officer of the supply ship Culgoa.⁹

However, lying within the steel confines of Culgoa were machine shops. The inventive Henry was soon putting the machinery to good use, designing and building gun sights, first for the Kearsarge, then for the battleship Missouri. His creativity led to more designs and to patents as he supported efforts made by Sims and others to improve gunnery. After deploying to the Caribbean in June 1905, he reported for duty at the Washington Navy Yard, home of the Naval Gun Factory. Inside the M Street walls, Henry tinkered with optics and producing better gun-sight telescopes.¹⁰

Although Henry patented many of his designs, he could not claim royalties for his cleverness, as the Navy claimed he invented it while on duty. Ironically, such rules did not apply for foreign navies, and Henry earned cash and honors for his design from the British and the Germans, two of America’s potential foes on the high seas.

While on duty at the Washington Navy Yard, Henry received his promotion to full lieutenant. More significantly, he met Corinne Montague late in the summer of 1906. So began a courtship that would be interrupted when Henry received orders back to Brooklyn. The Philadelphia-ported armored cruiser promptly steamed down to Cuba for two months and then returned for placement in reserve. Henry managed to get orders back to the nation’s capital, where he could continue the courtship. He proposed to Corinne on March 3, 1907. Seventeen days later, he reported as the ordnance officer to the commissioning crew of the battleship Kansas.¹¹

One officer in Henry’s new wardroom would eventually rise to serve as an operational commander for his first son. His name: Ens. William F. Halsey. Once placed into commission, Kansas would partake in numerous exercises and participate in the review of ships that was part of the Jamestown Exhibition. Meanwhile, Henry was buoyed by positive reports from Missouri about the four Mark XI telescopes of his design that were undergoing evaluation.¹²

The prospect of a world cruise did not thrill Henry, who thought the time spent traversing the globe could be better spent on local fleet exercises. He also faced the prospect of being away from his bride-to-be! Consequently, Corinne and Henry exchanged wedding vows in Baltimore on October 29, 1907, and honeymooned in New York, where the Kansas and six other battleships were being fitted out to go to sea.¹³

The New York-based ships departed for Norfolk in early December, where they met up with the other naval vessels that would make the epochal voyage. On December 16, “The Great White Fleet” departed on a course to South America. For the next four months, the 16 battleships, escorts, and auxiliaries worked their way down to the Straits of Magellan and then up the West Coast of South and Central America, making festive port visits along the way. Henry took advantage of what limited opportunities there were to improve the effectiveness of his green gun crews.¹⁴

Upon arriving in San Diego in April 1908, the lieutenant was pleased to see Corinne, who had arrived via train from the East Coast. For nearly the next three months, the fleet prepared for its trans-Pacific journey, and Henry took time off to spend a second honeymoon with his new bride touring California. With the fleet finally leaving San Francisco on July 7 for Honolulu, Corinne chose not to be left behind, booking passage with nine other wives on a Japanese passenger ship bound for Hawaii. After spending time with her husband on the beaches of Waikiki, she headed on to Sydney to wait for the fleet that would arrive after a port call to Auckland, New Zealand.

The wives who followed their husbands and embarked with the fleet became known as “the Geese,” and after a pleasant stay in Australia, they headed north to Yokohama where they waited the better part of a month as the American warships pulled into Manila and endured a typhoon en route from the Philippines. With the backdrop of a warm welcome extended by the hosting Japanese, Corinne and Henry once again reunited. They cherished their time together, as months would pass before they would meet again. In November, the fleet conducted battle exercises in the vicinity of the Philippines.

When Kansas arrived in Villefranche in mid-January 1909, Corinne once again met up with her husband, and the two joined with other couples for a trip to Paris. Departing from the Riviera, Kansas passed through the Straits of Gibraltar with the rest of the Great White Fleet and arrived at Hampton Roads on February 22 to conduct a presidential review for President Theodore Roosevelt, who was finishing his second term in office. Again united with his beloved Corinne, the two would spend time together ashore as Kansas pulled into the Philadelphia Navy Yard for a badly needed overhaul.

During the summer, Henry received a promotion to lieutenant commander and spent quite a bit of time at sea as Kansas worked to regain her combat readiness. To his delight, he received orders ashore in October for duty at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where he would continue his work on gunsights. By this time, the Royal Navy had commissioned the Dreadnought, an all-big-gun battle cruiser that rendered all navies obsolete overnight. The United States Navy began producing its own “dreadnoughts” with designs calling for main batteries containing 14- and even 16-inch caliber guns. Guns of such caliber could fire shells over the horizon, rendering deck-level gunsights useless. To fix the problem, the Navy commissioned its new battleships with large cage masts to serve as platforms for spotters. However, Henry saw the ultimate solution in aircraft hovering near the target reporting back results.¹⁵

In Philadelphia, his vision was reinforced through a friendship he had with Marshall Reid, a young man who had inherited a tidy sum and invested a bit of it to have Glenn Curtiss build him an aeroplane. Not only did the young lieutenant commander have opportunities to fly, but Corinne also flew in the aircraft, achieving some notoriety in the local papers. Henry and Reid attempted to establish a distance record by flying to Norfolk and back. Unfortunately, the engine blew as the two were puttering over a calm Delaware Bay. They safely landed, as the aircraft was equipped with a pontoon. Fog set in, precluding an immediate rescue. With the pontoon leaking, the two took turns sucking water and spitting over the side using rubber tubing they swiped from the fuel system. Staying afloat, the two were eventually rescued.¹⁶

Despite this unfortunate experience, the aviation bug had bit him and bit him good. “My father was hell-bent to get into naval aviation, which he thought was the next thing that he wanted to interest himself in, having straightened out naval gunnery,” recalled his son Lloyd.¹⁷

Naval aviation was in its infancy, with a small naval air station having been established at Greenbury Point, across the Severn River from the Naval Academy. Unable to get orders to the unit, Henry received orders in December 1912 to be the first lieutenant on the battleship Minnesota. Saying farewell to Corinne and newborn son Lloyd, Henry deployed to the Caribbean where he met up with the Severn River aviators during fleet exercises and by April had soloed.¹⁸

Minnesota returned to Norfolk in early spring 1913, which enabled Henry to meet his second son, Henry Ashmead, shortly after Corinne delivered him. The introduction was brief, as Minnesota deployed in response to violence in Mexico. The battleship returned that summer, allowing Henry to spend time with his wife and two sons. At the end of the year he received orders as executive officer and acting commanding officer of the battleship Mississippi, which was to serve as the training ship for the new Office of Naval Aeronautics. While the pre-Dreadnought battlewagon was deemed unsuitable for fleet use, the obsolescent Mississippi proved to be an ideal platform for a station ship. In January 1914, Henry used his battleship and a collier to transport the Annapolis-based naval air squadron down to Pensacola, Florida.¹⁹

Lloyd Montague Mustin’s parents—Henry C. Mustin, who poses as Naval Aviator Number 11, and Corinne Montague. (Courtesy Archives Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C., NH 105934-A-KN and of the Mustin family)

Recognizing the clear weather advantages of the Gulf Coast, the Navy decided to reopen an old naval station located at Pensacola to serve as a naval aviation training facility. As commanding officer of Mississippi, Henry would oversee the process. Docked at the station’s pier, the battlewagon provided berthing, messing, electricity, and other services to a facility that had been shut down three years earlier. All hands pitched in to make the old naval station operational. Aircraft arrived, as did the students who would learn to fly them.²⁰

Meanwhile, Pensacola’s location proved fortuitous as the ongoing unrest in Mexico escalated in the spring of 1914. President Wilson ordered naval forces to land ashore at Vera Cruz, and the Navy seized the opportunity to take some of its aircraft from Pensacola to perform scout work. Henry loaded floatplanes onto Mississippi and rushed across the Gulf of Mexico. On April 25, Henry launched the first naval aircraft to support combat operations. That morning a floatplane went aloft to locate a reported mine. Over the next two months, aircraft based from Mississippi and the cruiser Birmingham would serve as eyes for troops ashore. Henry, the visionary, could already see an offensive role for the aircraft.²¹

Lt. Cdr. Mustin is seated just to the left of the fuselage of a Curtiss “AB” type airplane, probably at Pensacola, Florida, circa late 1914. Some notable individuals sitting along with Mustin on that first row include (left to right) Lt. (jg) Robert G. Saufley, USN; Lt. (jg) Patrick N. L. Bellinger, USN; and Lt. Kenneth Whitling, USN. To his right are Lt. Albert C. Read, USN; Lt. Earle F. Johnson, USN; 1st Lt. Alfred A. Cunningham, USMC; 2nd Lt. Francis T. Evans, USMC; and Lt. (jg) Walter A. Haas, USN. Standing left to right behind Mustin are Lt. (jg) Robert R. Paunack, USN; Lt. (jg) Earl W. Spencer, USN; Lt. (jg) Harold T. Bartlett, USN; Lt. (jg) Walter A. Edwards, USN; Lt. Clarence K. Bronson, USN; Lt. Joseph P. Norfleet, USN; Lt. (jg) Edward O. McDonnell, USN; and Ens. Harold W. Scofield, USN. (Archives Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C.; NH 95805 (1))

However, his tour as commanding officer of Mississippi came to an end when the American government sold the ship to Greece. Deprived of his command, he received orders to North Carolina, a ship destined to replace Mississippi at Pensacola. But with war breaking out in Europe, the armored cruiser was diverted to France on a relief mission to pick up stranded Americans. Once in France, Henry and other embarked naval aviators headed off into the hinterland to learn about French aviation advances. The North Carolina then entered the Mediterranean to look after American interests in the eastern Mediterranean. Henry was not pleased, feeling strongly that his talents were being wasted. Finally, at the end of the year, he received orders to return to Washington and then back to Pensacola to reassume command of the Naval Aeronautic Station.²²

Settled in with his wife and two sons, Henry welcomed new classes of young officers arriving to take flight training. As the senior Henry often entertained, the elder son was introduced to some of the men who would form the backbone of naval aviation well into World War II. Men like George Murray and Marc A. “Pete” Mitscher eventually achieved flag rank and commanded carrier task forces in the Pacific during that conflict. Murray’s career would be of exceptional significance to Lloyd, as he eventually became his stepfather.

Henry understood the next step in the evolution of naval aviation was the installation of a reliable catapult on ships to launch aircraft. On November 5, 1915, he personally demonstrated the concept when he was launched off by a catapult erected on the fantail on the North Carolina. Although buoyed by success, Henry quickly grasped the complexity of aviation operations off a conventional warship, which limited the potential for naval aviation. A ship dedicated to air operations would be the next step in the evolution of naval aviation. Appearing before the General Board in Washington in the summer of 1916, Henry called for the design and construction of a ship capable of launching and landing torpedo planes, spotter aircraft, and fighters.

Meanwhile, Corinne invited her 20-year-old cousin Bessie Wallis Warfield down from Baltimore to help entertain and raise the boys. She caught the attention of one of the aviator trainees, Earl Winfield Spencer, and a month later he would propose. Two divorces and over two decades later, after King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom abdicated his throne in order to marry her, Bessie Wallis would become the Duchess of Windsor.²³

For Corinne’s husband, the prospects of continuing his career as a naval officer began to wilt as he was passed over for selection to captain. A combination of circumstances had caused him to fall in disfavor in Washington. Stripped of his aviator wings, he subsequently received orders to be executive officer of North Dakota, an obsolete battleship homeported in Philadelphia. With the outbreak of World War I and its focus on convoy operations and anti-submarine warfare, Henry felt he had reached a dead end. However, when Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels solicited war-winning ideas in a message sent out to all commands, Henry responded with a scheme to launch aircraft off sea sleds that could motor at high speeds off the German coast, enabling close-range attacks of German U-boat facilities.²⁴

The plan caught the attention of senior officials on both sides of the Atlantic. Henry would be recalled to Washington, but before he detached from North Dakota, he performed a heroic feat in a storm off Cape Hatteras after a swell had swept three sailors overboard. Two of the sailors were lost, but Henry managed to maneuver the ship so that he could dive in with a line attached to his waist to swim toward the drowning seaman. He later made light of the rescue, but the effort had put enormous strain on his body and would affect his health.²⁵

Reporting to the Bureau of Construction and Repair at the Washington Navy Yard, Henry oversaw the design of the speed boats that would carry the aircraft and the acquisition of the planes themselves. If all went to plan, Henry envisioned a force of hundreds of sea sleds would be in position to launch attacks against the Kaiser’s undersea boat assets by mid-1919. In November, the project had come far enough along to allow for a sea trail. Although the initial test was scored a failure, a follow-on test in March 1919 validated the concept. However, with the end of the war in November 1918, a concept and test flight would be as far as the project would go.²⁶

Caproni plane on sea sled, November 15, 1918. (Archives Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C.; NH 112975)

While the project didn’t affect the course of the war, many took note of Henry’s performance, and he finally earned the right to pin on eagles. Now, Capt. Henry Mustin would continue his advocacy for an aircraft carrier. Eventually, funds were made available to convert the collier Jupiter into the Langley.²⁷

Henry again received command at sea, this time of Aroostook, a newly converted aircraft tender based in San Diego. Pete Mitscher embarked with him as senior squadron commander and commander of air forces assigned to the fleet at San Diego. Ensconced on the West Coast, Henry hoped to continue to sell the value of naval aviation in spotting for surface ship gunnery. With Mitscher aloft in an F-5L Curtiss JN “Jenny” observation plane providing feedback, the battleship Mississippi, commanded by Capt. William Moffett, scored higher in its gunnery drills than the other West Coast BBs combined!²⁸

In early 1921, Henry demonstrated the long range and versatility of flying boats with a trip down to Panama and back, a feat that got his comrades and him dubbed “the Columbuses of the air.” Due to the pioneering work conducted by Henry and his peers, the Navy began to embrace naval aviation. Ironically, some of the battleship admirals, who once scoffed at the flying contraptions, became their chief proponents when the Army’s Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell made noises about unifying military aviation into a new air force service. To demonstrate that the Navy took its aviation seriously, the Bureau of Aeronautics was created in July 1921 with Moffett at the rudder. Moffett selected Henry to be his assistant chief.²⁹

When the Washington Naval Conference adjourned after the signing of a treaty that limited further battleship construction and limited American fortifications in the Western Pacific, it became clear to Henry that naval aviation would become critical in a hypothetical war against Japan. After his vigorous campaigning, Congress authorized funds to convert two battle cruisers slated for scrapping under the treaty to become the carriers Saratoga and Lexington. Going before the Navy General Board, Henry argued for three more carriers, envisioning these ships operating as part of task force formations that could send aircraft to lash out at enemy ships and land masses.³⁰

Given the austerity of the budget, Henry’s vision fell on deaf ears. In the interim, Langley had joined the fleet and presented the Navy with opportunities to operate aircraft with the fleet. For Henry it must have been frustrating. Perhaps the stress of the job compounded the physical strain on his body caused by the rescue he made while on North Dakota. In January 1923 he was admitted to the Washington Naval Hospital, where doctors determined he had an aortic aneurysm—a ballooned artery that rubbed against his ribs. In March 1923 he began experiencing chest pains and updated his will to include his third son, who had been born in 1917. He would check in and out of naval hospitals in Washington and Newport, Rhode Island, as his condition worsened. On August 23, 1923, he died.³¹

Henry C. Mustin’s death left Corinne widowed as the mother of three boys. The eldest, Lloyd, had just turned 12. Although still a young lad, Lloyd’s father had left an impression on him, and he would learn to further appreciate the contributions his father made to the naval service as his life moved forward. Furthermore, he would inherit the tight association of relationships that his father had built with those officers who proved themselves to be pioneers in the early days of naval aviation and would later turn out to be some of the key Navy leaders during World War II.

Growing up the son of a naval officer, Lloyd and his two younger brothers had nomadic childhoods as they and their mom followed Dad to his various duty stations and occasionally attended boarding schools. At summer camps, Lloyd learned to pitch tents, a skill that would come in handy two decades later at a place called Guadalcanal. With the death of his father, Lloyd was eventually taken in by his uncle John Burton, who lived in Philadelphia.³²

Meanwhile, Corinne stayed with a cousin at Gunston Farm on Maryland’s eastern shore, where her two younger sons were attending a boarding school. From there she could catch ferries over to Annapolis to visit with family friends, including Lt. Cdr. George Murray, who had established a course in aeronautics at the Naval Academy. He had suffered the loss of his spouse a few years earlier. Murray was obviously attracted to Corinne but also cared much for the three sons of his mentor. In the fall of 1925, they announced their engagement.³³

Here Lieutenant Commander Mustin visits with his two elder sons—Henry Ashmead and Lloyd Montague. (John Fass Morton collection)

A year later, they all attended a dedication ceremony in Philadelphia of Mustin Field, an airstrip co-located with the Naval Aircraft Factory. Lloyd and his brothers were impressed with all the speeches and presentations honoring their father, including a plaque from his Naval Academy classmates, and flyovers and other aerobatic demonstrations. However, despite his father’s naval background, Lloyd was not initially committed to following in his wake. However, living in Philadelphia, he occasionally visited the inner basin of the navy yard and scampered around the ships in mothballs, including the Olympia of Manila Bay fame. Standing on the bridge where Commodore Dewey once said “You may fire when ready, Gridley” suddenly made him realize that he had a calling.³⁴

Encouraged by his stepdad, the junior Mustin attended Columbia Preparatory School in Washington, D.C., to ready himself for the Naval Academy exams. He did well enough to earn a presidential appointment to go to the prestigious campus in Annapolis. Arriving in June 1928, Lloyd Mustin was still a month shy of his 17th birthday. Competing in the class standings with arriving plebes who in some cases were four years older with civilian college backgrounds, Lloyd realized he would have to work hard to succeed academically.³⁵

In athletics, the young plebe made his mark early, scoring wins at swim meets competing in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle competitions. Although he struggled with chemistry, Lloyd survived his first year. Departing Annapolis in June 1929, he spent his youngster summer cruise on the battleship Arkansas, which took him and many of his classmates on a tour of Southern Europe and England. While underway, Lloyd performed numerous chores normally associated with enlisted sailors. His battle station was in turret six, the far aft turret where he loaded powder bags into the breech.³⁶

Returning to Annapolis in September, the 18-year-old midshipman began to break away from his peers academically, scoring high grades in mechanical engineering and in ordnance courses. Dubbed by his fellow middies as “Mustie” and “Mustang,” he continued to make waves in the pool, setting a Naval Academy 440-yard freestyle record in a competition against Dartmouth. Unfortunately, he began to have trouble with his eyesight, and when doctors determined he had astigmatism, his dreams of following in his father’s footsteps as a naval aviator were dashed, all the more depressing given that summer featured aviation orientation.³⁷

His junior year swimming exploits attracted the attention of Emily Morton, the sister of one of Lloyd’s swim team buddies. By May, the two were going steady. With Emily, Lloyd found he was dating a girl coming from another family with a strong naval heritage. Emily’s father had attended the academy a year apart from Lloyd’s Dad and served with the senior Mustin on several occasions. Sadly, like his father, Emily’s dad died in 1924 at a relatively young age. Her mother’s father happened to be Thomas Benton Howard, a hydrographer who rose in ranks to become one of the Navy’s first four-star admirals.

In the summer of 1931, Lloyd once again found himself on the decks of Arkansas, this time as a first-class midshipman on a North Atlantic cruise to Europe. There he was able to meet up with his mother to sightsee in Denmark and Scotland. As a gun-crew captain on a 5-inch mount, Lloyd’s performance earned him a letter of commendation.³⁸

During his senior year, Lloyd continued to pursue his relationship with Emily. He continued to excel in the pool and in the classroom. Upon graduation, he was ranked 18th of 423 midshipmen. Unlike other classmates, his prospects for immediate marriage were not promising. Since Emily was still only 17, her mother would not give her consent. After intense discussions between family members, Emily’s mother changed her mind. With permission granted, the couple quickly married at St. Anne’s church in Annapolis on June 8, 1932. Now an ensign, Lloyd Mustin prepared to take his bride across the country to Long Beach where the Asiatic Fleet-bound cruiser Augusta was ported.

Conventional wisdom said battleships were the place to be for a junior officer; however, Lloyd had spent two midshipmen cruises on the Arkansas and realized that ensigns could easily get lost within the junior wardroom. A cruiser, in contrast, featured a smaller wardroom and offered greater responsibilities. In addition, Augusta, as a heavy cruiser with 8-inch batteries, was designed to engage battleships.³⁹

Throughout the remainder of 1932 and into 1933, the cruiser operated from the West Coast as the flagship of the Scouting Force. In early 1933, Augusta participated in Fleet Problem XXI off Hawaii. Lloyd rotated through different departments on the ship, first working in communications and then moving into the auxiliaries division. Returning to Long Beach, the cruiser was at anchor on March 10 when a strong earthquake hit Southern California. Looking out from the forecastle, Lloyd could see fires erupting ashore. His pregnant wife Emily felt the jolt that made their apartment uninhabitable.

That summer, Augusta underwent an overhaul at the Puget Sound Navy Yard. Moving up there to be with her husband, Emily gave birth to a son on August 31. The couple agreed to honor Lloyd’s father by naming the boy Henry Croskey. The young ensign had just over a month and a half to enjoy fatherhood as the cruiser departed for Shanghai on October 20. The separation would be temporary. Meanwhile, prior to getting underway, a change of command ceremony placed Capt. Chester W. Nimitz as commanding officer. Nimitz immediately impressed the young ensign. He believed in training junior officers and holding them accountable. Under the watchful eye of Nimitz, Lloyd found himself frequently at the conn as the officer of the deck, maneuvering the heavy cruiser in a great variety of exercises. Lloyd would later insist his junior officers learn ship-handling skills when he was entrusted with a ship command, and his son Henry would follow his father’s example.⁴⁰

Arriving at Shanghai on November 9, Captain Nimitz welcomed Adm. Frank B. Upham, who broke his flag as Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet, in Augusta, enabling the former flagship Houston to depart for the States. To Lloyd’s delight, his wife and son had already arrived on the steamer President Cleveland. Much as Corinne had followed the first Henry Croskey Mustin to Asia, Emily had made the trip with the second Henry Croskey tucked in a crib. The new Asiatic Fleet flagship made its way to Manila for the holidays. Emily and son followed on a passenger liner. After wintering in the Philippine capital, Augusta again returned to the China coast as did Emily and son. Besides having his crew perform the standard flagship duties, Nimitz insisted that all hands work on their small arms marksmanship and get involved in athletics competitions. Lloyd excelled at swim meets.

By May, Nimitz had Lloyd performing the duties of the assistant navigator, and he performed much of the navigational work to get the ship to the northern port of Tsingtao. During that Chinese port visit, Fleet Adm. Togo Heihachiro, the victor over the Russians at Tsushima in 1905, died. Captain Nimitz had met the legendary Japanese naval officer decades earlier and had great admiration for him. Augusta was Yokohama-bound to pay respects, arriving on June 4. While Upham, Nimitz, and senior officers from various navies honored the deceased hero, Lloyd had a chance to look over some Japanese Navy hardware, and he came away impressed by the quality of the ships and the men who crewed them.⁴¹

Lloyd and his bride, Emily Morton Mustin, in China following their marriage. (Morton collection)

Nimitz steamed his ship back to Tsingtao, which would serve as the host port for the Asiatic Fleet summer exercises. Augusta scored well, earning a battle efficiency trophy. During the summer Emily and her husband and son spent time exploring the country’s interior, including a visit to Beijing. During October and November, the Asiatic Fleet flagship headed down under for a visit to Australia, calling on Sydney, Melbourne, Fremantle, and Perth. Following port calls in the Dutch East Indies, she would return to Manila in time for Christmas.⁴²

As the ship entered 1935, Lloyd helped implement new damage control standards that were being instituted fleet wide. His experience would come in handy later in his career. Again, as winter turned to spring, the flagship returned to China, where a relief awaited Captain Nimitz. Before he left, he had advised his junior officers to seek destroyer duty. With his orders taking him to the Bureau of Navigation, which handled personnel detailing, Nimitz would be in a position to see that his officers’ wishes were granted.⁴³

The summer schedule and routine mimicked that of the year before. In the fall, Bangkok was the destination, with Adm. Orin G. Murfin having relieved Upham as the Asiatic Fleet commander. Returning to Manila in November, Lloyd and his wife and son spent their last winter together in the Philippines before he would be detached in April 1936 with orders to a Mahan-class destroyer under construction. Lloyd would be the plank-owner assistant gunnery officer, also filling the torpedo and communications officer billets in Lamson. Before reporting to Bath, Maine, as a member of the pre-commissioning crew, the Navy routed him through the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C. and the torpedo school at Goat Island off Newport, Rhode Island. His time in the nation’s capital was dedicated to learning about the Navy’s new 5-inch/38-caliber gun that would see service into the 1990s. He had a particular interest in range-finding.

Joining Lamson early in the summer of 1936, Lloyd witnessed the builders’ trials and began to familiarize himself with the ship and his shipmates. The ship then steamed down to Boston to be commissioned in October and remain at the naval shipyard for an extended fitting-out period to correct some structural problems. After the Navy declared the ship fit for sea duty, she steamed down to Brazil and Argentina for her shakedown cruise. Lamson then returned to Norfolk, where additional tweaks were made.

With the exception of his time at sea, Lloyd had been able to spend a good bit of time with his wife and son. However, in early June the three were once again separated as Emily watched Lamson pull away from a Norfolk pier destined for San Diego via the Panama Canal. When Lamson arrived on the West Coast at the end of June, she was in port for only a few days when orders came to deploy to the South Pacific. Lamson deployed two other destroyers with Lexington to search for the missing Amelia Earhart. This time when he returned, Emily and baby Henry were there to greet him as Emily had driven across the country to set up a new homestead in Southern California.⁴⁴

During the next few months, the new destroyer spent much time plying the waters off Southern California to conduct various exercises with other fleet units. In fleet competitions, Lamson excelled in her antiaircraft gunnery and in communications—two feathers in Lloyd’s cap, as he also had taken on the duties as the communications officer. The news from the beach was also good, as Emily gave birth to a second child in May 1937. She had promised to name the child for her uncle Doug who died the previous December. That the baby was a girl made no difference. Douglas Howard Mustin would be Henry’s little sister.⁴⁵

A month after the birth of his second child, the Mustin family again trekked across the country as Lloyd returned to the banks of the Severn with orders to spend two years at the Naval Postgraduate School, which was then co-located at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, to study ordnance engineering. At the time, the school offered a sub-specialty in fire control that would require the student to spend his second year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lloyd and three others—Horacio “Rivits” Rivero, Ed Hopper, and Corky Ward—opted for this study regimen and together would become known as the “Four Horsemen.” However, before Lloyd traded the banks of the Severn for the Charles, he traveled down to Newport News to witness the christening of a new Sims-class destroyer named Mustin for his father. Emily served as the ship’s sponsor and had the honor of smashing the traditional bottle of bubbly against the newly fabricated steel hull.⁴⁶

By the time he reached MIT in the fall of 1939, the world was changing around the freshly promoted Lt. Lloyd Mustin. Germany had marched into Poland and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had established a neutrality patrol. As the situation in Europe deteriorated, Lloyd and his fellow “Horsemen” studied in the Electrical Engineering department and learned about servomechanisms, “the mechanical means to amplify low-power command signals to control the motion of heavy equipment.”⁴⁷ The four officers sought naval applications for this new technology. While Ward and Hooper decided to develop a servomechanism for the 16-inch guns on the new battleship North Carolina, Mustin and Rivero sought an application for antiaircraft guns to enable them to track close-in passes by enemy aircraft. Their thesis, “A Servo-Mechanism for a Rate Follow-Up System,” did contribute to the development of what would become known as the Mark 14 and 15 gunsights—tracking systems that would be mass produced and supplied to multiple ship types and classes.⁴⁸

Upon finishing their work at MIT, the four officers were sent to Bausch and Lomb, in Rochester, New York, to the Washington Naval Gun Factory, the Bureau of Ordnance, and to the Dahlgren Proving Ground, to share their technical knowledge with the naval manufacturers, research and development people, and testers. While at the Bureau, Lloyd learned of another new technology—radar. While at Dahlgren, Lloyd worked on improving the effectiveness of a variety of short-range weapons against attacking aircraft. At the time, the Naval Gun Factory was fielding the 1.1-inch machine gun for testing and eventual deployment. Lloyd found the weapon to be unreliable. Typically, it would fire a few rounds and then freeze up. The Bureau’s response was to make Lloyd the project officer for the gun, with authority extending back to the production line at the Naval Gun Factory. Lloyd found that the specifications for the gun’s parts were too tight. By loosening up the tolerances, the gun was not only easier to produce, but also more reliable. While the gun did well at the Dahlgren Proving Ground, it was not as successful in its service with the fleet.⁴⁹

Another gun that Lloyd became reacquainted with at Dahlgren was the 5-inch 38 that had been designed at the Naval Gun Factory at the Washington Navy Yard. During testing there was a troubling reoccurrence of breech closure failures. Lloyd recalled the innovative solution they came up with to increase the necessary tension to close the breech once the shell was loaded:

We would put the gun level at which point the bottom of the breech plug is easily accessible, and from the bottom of that breech plug we would suspend a 5 inch 38 [drill] projectile. The drill projectile weighs the same as the regular one—55 pounds. We would tension the spring until the breech closed lifting that extra 55 pounds with it.⁵⁰

Whereas the 1.1-inch machine gun saw limited distribution, the 5-inch 38 proliferated. “We had the anti-aircraft defenses of Moscow including U.S. Navy 5 inch 38 guns,” Lloyd recalled. The twin-mount configuration would be included in the armaments of all new battleships and refits of the older ones, cruisers, Essex-class aircraft carriers, and eventually in destroyers.⁵¹

With his experience at sea followed by his post-graduate education and follow-on tours, Lt. Lloyd M. Mustin was one of the most knowledgeable naval officers in the world in the field of shooting aircraft out of the sky. Thus his selection to be the assistant gunnery officer of the Navy’s first antiaircraft light cruiser, Atlanta, represented a wise choice by the Navy’s detailers. With Lloyd embarked, the gunnery department would have a leader who would be able to train the crews to fire effectively the 5-inch 38-caliber guns and 1.1-inch machine gun systems that he understood inside out.⁵²