William A. Moffett
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE COLLECTION
IN THE GENERATION OF AMERICAN OFFICERS PRODUCED BY THE SAIL-steam, coastal defense navy, none played a more far-reaching leadership role during the transition to an air-centered fleet with a global reach than did William Adger Moffett. For twelve years, from 1921 to 1933, in spite of strong opposition by the ruling battleship men, Admiral Moffett wielded immense authority in forging the fledgling air arm of the U.S. Navy. His consummate managerial skill enabled him to lay the foundations of American naval striking power during World War II and for the ensuing half century. His epitaph, the “Father of Naval Aviation,” is entirely appropriate.
In terms of national policy and naval strategy, Moffett consistently endorsed the philosophy of worldwide American maritime expansion advocated by Alfred Thayer Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt. Indeed, as a young lieutenant (junior grade), Moffett served under Captain Mahan’s command in the protected cruiser Chicago from 1893 to 1895, and he attended the Naval War College in the summer of 1896, during Mahan’s last tour there. By the time he became an admiral, in the 1920s, Moffett followed Mahan in the belief that the United States needed a revitalized merchant marine and additional colonial possessions as naval bases.
“All virile nations are naturally annexationists,” Moffett argued, in favor of an American empire; and in 1930, he declared: “The United States should not have a navy inferior to any other . . . . I am also in favor of a merchant marine inferior to none.” American warships, merchantmen, and overseas bases were essential, he argued, to fill the vacuum being created by the demise of the British Empire.
I can not but feel that Great Britain has reached her pinnacle; that they have a glorious history and traditions but are living on traditions too much. . . . They have traditions and what is generally called aristocracy, but while we are comparatively short on both, we have virility and are a young nation stepping out with vision and confidence, and nothing will stop our being the greatest nation in the world except what we do within ourselves.1
Typical of naval officers of his generation, Moffett had the manner of a cool professional devoted to his service. He developed his administrative talents as a line officer in the usual shipboard and shoreside assignments and was not dazzled by innovations in technology. For example, observing the bitter resistance of the line to absorbing engineers, Moffett learned to accept change by understanding and applying technological progress. He took the same attitude with aircraft. “My former service on and experience with steam and the attitude of the Navy toward it,” he observed in 1933, “has been of great assistance to me being patient when endeavoring to do all that I could to assist in indoctrinating the Navy as a whole in regard to aviation and its importance.”2
Moffett’s sound intellect and controlled manner stemmed from the circumstances of his youth. Born of Scotch-Irish parents in the genteel and Civil War–devastated port city of Charleston, South Carolina, on 31 October 1869, Moffett grew up in the dual environment of maritime commerce and Southern Reconstruction society. His father, a merchant of the city and former Confederate officer, passed on to him a deep respect for and emulation of the mighty Robert E. Lee. And though the father died in the boy’s fifth year, Moffett drew similar strength from his mother. His solid upbringing in a family of nine children (he was number seven) enabled him to become a family man himself, with six children of his own. Moffett’s calm, Southern demeanor stood him in good stead in the public schools and at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he often had to defend the honor of the South against Yankee critics. A fairly mediocre student, he graduated rather far down in the Class of 1890.3
His early career reflected the technological changes that were transforming the U.S. Navy at the turn of the century: service in sailing and steam sloops, a gunboat once and a monitor twice, cruisers, and predreadnought, as well as dreadnought, battleships. On board the Charleston, a protected cruiser named after his hometown, Moffett participated in the capture of Guam and the Philippine city of Manila during the war with Spain. His skills were sufficient to lead the Ottoman navy to offer him a senior commission in 1900, when he was but a new lieutenant in the battleship Kentucky en route to the Far East. He declined that honor, but received increasingly responsible posts during the expansion of the Roosevelt Navy.4
Moffett’s long seagoing service led him to command of the scout cruiser Chester late in 1913. As such, he personally delivered Admiral Henry T. Mayo’s ultimatum to the Mexicans at Tampico in April 1914, an action culminating in the Vera Cruz intervention, in which his ship engaged Mexican shore batteries. That August, he was given command of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago, Illinois, with additional duty of supervising the three naval districts in the region. His organizational and innovative genius shone brightly as he upgraded the training program, which led to his promotion to captain in 1916 and his retention in the post throughout America’s participation in World War I. From a capacity of sixteen hundred trainees, Moffett increased the recruit accommodations to some fifty thousand, making Great Lakes the largest recruit training depot in the Navy. It produced nearly one hundred thousand sailors for wartime service. Moffett even brought in the renowned bandmaster John Philip Sousa to provide music for the station. In December 1918, Moffett’s reward was command of the battleship Mississippi for two years.5
Like many of his peers, Moffett had been catapulted into the forefront of the managerial revolution sweeping American industry in peacetime as in war. At Great Lakes he not only streamlined the internal organization but learned the art of working effectively through local political and business leaders. He developed an especially close relationship with the chewing gum magnate William K. (“Bill”) Wrigley, Jr. Moffett’s fine diplomatic tact enabled him, at the head of a landing party from the Mississippi, to prevent a radical labor demonstration during President Woodrow Wilson’s visit to Seattle in September 1919.6
Moffett’s first real exposure to the new technology of naval aviation occurred early in 1913 when, as executive officer of the new dreadnought Arkansas, he went duck hunting at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with the young fliers of the U.S. Navy’s first seaplane unit. But he took no interest in the crude flying machines. Reflecting the general attitude of his fellow officers, he remarked to the airmen’s commander, Lieutenant John H. (“Jack”) Towers: “Towers, you’re such a nice chap, why don’t you give up this aviation fad? You’ll surely get yourself killed. Any man who sticks to it is either crazy or else a plain damned fool!”7
The use of military aircraft in the European war and the pressing need to train aviation mechanics at Great Lakes changed Moffett’s attitude, however. Working closely with Wrigley, he established an aviation unit of more than 250 planes at the sprawling depot. By the time he assumed command of the Mississippi, Moffett had begun to appreciate the revolutionary promise of fleet aviation, particularly because Japan had suddenly reemerged as the major enemy across the vast Pacific.8
Following experiments on board the Texas, Moffett had a ramp installed over a turret on the Mississippi in order to launch scout planes to spot the fall of her shells. (The planes landed ashore.) During gunnery exercises in May and June 1920, these Sopwiths, Jennys, and F5L flying boats, under Captain Henry C. Mustin and Commander Towers, transmitted the proper ranges by wireless to Moffett’s gunnery officer, Commander William L. Calhoun. On one day alone, Moffett signaled the aviators: “Your aeroplanes were our salvation. We thank you.” In fact, the planes enabled the Mississippi to attain scores so high that they almost equaled those of all the other battleships combined! Among three aerial spotters whom Moffett singled out for high praise was Lieutenant Commander Marc A. Mitscher, an officer who would earn his growing admiration over time and who, as Admiral Mitscher, would lead the famous Fast Carrier Task Force in the war against Japan.9
The senior admirals realized that naval aviation was maturing so rapidly that it needed its own bureau organization, their thinking stimulated in no small part by the growing crusade of Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell of the U.S. Army’s Air Service. Mitchell publicly proclaimed that the Navy’s air arm should be united with the Army’s in a new, separate, and independent air force, geared to land-based strategic bombing. So uncompromising and outspoken was Mitchell that the director of naval aviation, the normally affable Captain Thomas T. Craven, finally refused even to speak to him. As intraservice efforts to create the Navy’s own bureau of aeronautics accelerated over 1920 to 1921, a tactful but knowledgeable bureau chief was needed, and Moffett was the logical choice. At the urging of Mustin, Moffett approached Wrigley to ask Wrigley’s support for his candidacy. Wrigley had become a major power in the Republican Party, and he was pleased to lend his support in recommending Moffett to lead naval aviation. President Warren G. Harding agreed, whereupon Moffett relieved Craven as director in March 1921, then fleeted up to become Chief of the new Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) upon its creation in July. The post carried the rank of rear admiral.10
Moffett’s style and philosophy of leadership in naval aviation were immediately obvious and did not change in the twelve years that he held the office. A man of only medium build, the white-haired Moffett was nevertheless a commanding presence, with his erect bearing and quiet, confident manner. Energetic, neat, and well ordered, he drove about in the latest model LaSalle automobile. Though no flag-waving “prophet” like Mitchell, he was an impressive individual who had to be reckoned with. Indeed, Admiral William V. Pratt, his friend and Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), remarked to Moffett in front of Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams in 1930 that, as Moffett recalled it: “I was the most insistent person he had ever known. I told him that when I felt I was right, I would insist to the end.” And yet, to the aviation community, in the words of Towers, Bill Moffett was “beloved by all who had the privilege of really knowing him.”11
The insistence that Pratt observed was Moffett’s determination to gain for aviation the importance he firmly believed that it deserved within the Navy. The rigid conservatism of the so-called Gun Club of battleship admirals stood in his way at nearly every turn. Moffett often noted that the problem of selling naval aviation was “lack of knowledge and lack of understanding,” both of which he labored energetically to correct. His task was made more difficult by the outspokenness of younger pilots who proclaimed the obsolescence of the battleship, thus further arousing senior admirals already resentful of BuAer’s budgetary and manpower needs in an era of stringent economy measures. Moffett’s struggles were fought largely within the Navy, with colleagues—”the old timers in the Navy who don’t appreciate Aviation,” he called them. These adversaries held such key positions as CNO, Commander in Chief United States Fleet (CinCUS), and Chief of the Bureau of Navigation (BuNav). The BuNav chief controlled personnel assignments, a subject of major interest in Moffett’s attempt to gain control of the assignment of its aviators for BuAer, a goal achieved in the latter years of his tenure as bureau chief. Moffett set out to make BuAer into a superbureau, just as the office of naval aviation had been during the war—that is, an agency reaching into the previously sacrosanct bureaus that had controlled personnel, engineering, weapons, and even medicine.12
Moffett thus worked within the system to “sell” naval aviation. Of him, Towers wrote, “I cannot recall any man who more loved a fight and who could think of more ways to win one.” Moffett grew so adept at it that he came to be feared by the conservative battleship-weaned admirals. The infighting never let up during his dozen years at the helm of BuAer. Even when he won victories for aviation that became department policy, the criticism and antagonism toward him so intensified that he felt compelled to counterattack it with pointed letters. For example, in the spring of 1932, he chastised Admiral Frank M. Schofield for being “disloyal” to the Navy by criticizing its adoption of Moffett’s much resented dirigible program. Not only was Schofield the reigning CinCUS, he had also been an academy classmate of Moffett’s. Moffett then expressed his chagrin to Towers: “Battles are in progress, not daily but hourly. . . . I must say that when we find we are double-crossed here in the Department in regard to flight pay and other Aviation matters, it makes one wonder whether we should continue the fight.”13
But continue he did. Instead of depending on his uniformed colleagues in the hope of gaining concessions, he quietly courted presidents and members of Congress for appropriations. His careful testimony in congressional hearings was especially effective, as expert advisers sat behind him to coach him with data. He made speeches to appropriate patriotic and interest groups and utilized the press whenever he believed it necessary, often corresponding with publishers, editors, and reporters whom he had befriended. (In 1925 he began a letter to Pulitzer Prize winner Herbert Bayard Swope with “Herbert, old man.”) He entered naval planes and pilots in air shows to win public recognition. The best of these fliers were his special “pets,” notably polar explorer Richard E. Byrd, altitude record holder C. C. Champion, and speed champion Alford J. Williams. He appointed the famous pioneer Naval Aviator Number One, Commander T. G. (“Spuds”) Ellyson, to head his plans division more for Ellyson’s considerable public image than for his ability. Moffett shepherded along the struggling aircraft manufacturers to provide ever better planes for the Navy, especially after the more efficient air-cooled engine had replaced the water-cooled design. He not only established aviation training at the Naval Academy but also succeeded in having regular training planes assigned there.14
Moffett concentrated on policy and politics; he allowed his officer advisers to attend to details. In so doing, he became a master at promoting the cause of aviation within the U.S. Navy. In contrast to Mitchell the crusader, Moffett acted as the steward of the fleet’s growing air arm, as he was quietly and effectively overseeing a revolution in naval warfare from the administrative end. He became an organization man in the new age of machine weaponry. In fully appreciating the realities of warfare in the modern world, he placed himself squarely in the future.
To guarantee his own future and reappointment to successive four-year terms as Chief of BuAer, Moffett again solicited the support of his good friend Wrigley in Chicago. In 1925 and again in 1929, Wrigley prevailed upon the President (first Calvin Coolidge, then Herbert Hoover) to reappoint Moffett, a brand of politicking thoroughly resented by Moffett’s peers and superiors. In both instances, Moffett rebuffed attempts by his superiors to send him to sea or shunt him off to the General Board. He would have enjoyed a seagoing flag command, but he realized that the position of naval aviation was too tenuous to be left to others with less political finesse and clout. In other words, Moffett made himself indispensable as head of naval aviation and won a resounding battle against Secretary of the Navy Curtis D. Wilbur, CNO Admiral Charles F. Hughes, CinCUS Admiral Samuel S. Robison, and BuNav Chief R. H. Leigh, who tried to have him reassigned in 1929. Such a triumph, however, led Moffett to take care thereafter, “for as the Good Book says ‘Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.’”15
The closest point of contact between Moffett and the administrations he served was the Secretary of the Navy, to whom all bureau chiefs reported directly. Edwin Denby gave no particular personal attention to aviation during the formative years of Moffett’s rule, but the accession of Wilbur in 1924 brought direct secretarial involvement. A graduate of the academy two years ahead of Moffett, Wilbur sided with his own classmate Admiral Hughes, CNO from 1927 to 1930, in trying to have Moffett transferred from command of BuAer.
Although the Assistant Secretary of the Navy figured somewhat in these relationships, the creation in 1926 of the new post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics granted naval aviation a unique position within the civilian hierarchy of the Navy. It also strengthened Moffett in his battle with the CNO and BuNav because both men who filled the post were strong Moffett supporters. The first appointee held impeccable credentials: Edward P. Warner was a respected aeronautical engineer and educator who quickly became a forceful spokesman alongside Moffett in budgetary hearings. His successor, in 1929, was even more prominent—David S. Ingalls, who had been the Navy’s only fighter ace in World War I and who as a practicing pilot now personally tested all new naval aircraft. His aeronautical knowledge and pleasing personality never failed to win over congressional inquirers. When Ingalls resigned in 1932 to run for elective office, the post fell vacant as an economy measure, but Moffett had the continued general support of Secretary Adams and Assistant Secretary Ernest L. Jahncke.16
In molding BuAer internally, Moffett surrounded himself with the best available talent from the flying cadre. Because too few senior officers were qualified in aviation to fill the senior billets, he instituted the naval aviation observers course at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, wherein captains and commanders could learn the rudiments of flight and do everything—spotting, navigating, operating the radio—except actually flying the plane. Moffett had flown to Pensacola when time permitted to participate in the course during his first year in office. In June 1922, after accumulating some 150 hours of flight time, he was rated as a naval observer. He kept the program in existence for another ten years, until qualified pilots attained sufficient seniority to fill the increasing number of aviation command billets.17
Though only a stopgap solution, the observer program typified Moffett’s wise managerial ability to compromise where necessary. Ideally, however, he preferred to have actual pilots advising him in order to tap their undisputed expertise. Consequently, he selected as his first Assistant Chief of Bureau the innovative pioneer Mustin. After Mustin’s premature death in 1923, observer Captain Albert W. Johnson stepped in for a year, to be followed by two pioneer aviators, Commanders Kenneth Whiting and John Rodgers. The latter’s fatal plane crash in 1926 led to the appointment of observer Captain Emory S. Land. Though highly talented, Land lacked close contact with the line officer community as a member of the Construction Corps. The three subsequent assistants, however, were aviators: Ernest J. King (from 1928 to 1929); Jack Towers (from 1929 to 1931), as Naval Aviator Number Three, the most experienced and able; and Arthur B. Cook (from 1931 to 1933). King and Cook were latecomers to the aviation community as qualified pilots. All were superior men who held or attained the rank of captain while in the job.
During his first term (1921 to 1925), Moffett and his advisers agreed that aviation’s primary role was reconnaissance as the “eyes of the fleet,” just as it had been in World War I. Naval aircraft should not only spot for the gunships but also fly antisubmarine patrols, conduct long-range scouting against enemy fleet units, and, like scouting ships, provide additional firepower in the form of light bombs and aerial torpedoes. The platforms for these functions were flying boats, shore-based dirigibles, and the experimental aircraft carrier Langley, commissioned in 1922.
Although this reconnaissance mission satisfied the conservative admirals, Moffett and his cohorts also believed that the carrier, flying boat, and airship would gain enhanced striking power as a new advanced generation of delivery systems replaced wartime technology. Thus, they planned to develop the air arm into an offensive force. Under their leadership, the 1920s became a period of transition for aviation, from employment in the traditional scouting role for battleships to its use as a primary attack element, which would ultimately—during the 1940s—replace the battleship altogether. The more apparent the future course became, the more antagonistic the Gun Club grew. Moffett proceeded cautiously in the face of such opposition; until the technology matured to develop its offensive role, he carefully insisted that the air arm must only support the battle line.
Between 1921 and 1925 the aircraft carrier moved to the forefront of Moffett’s plans. During the Washington naval arms limitation conference of 1921–1922, Moffett welcomed a decision that allowed the United States to convert two uncompleted battle cruiser hulls into large 33,000-ton carriers. These vessels, the Lexington and Saratoga, took most of the decade to design, build, outfit, and provide with special aircraft and squadrons of trained pilots. Experiments with the tiny 11,500-ton Langley quickly showed just how powerful the two Lexingtons would be. As part of the war reparations from Germany, the Navy received the rigid dirigible Los Angeles, and then it constructed its own Shenandoah. Plans called for testing both airships as platforms foreshadowing fleet “flying aircraft carriers,” capable not only of long-range reconnaissance alone, but also of operating with a few scout planes launched from a special trapeze mechanism.
The four years of Moffett’s first term at BuAer were the most chaotic because of the uncertain promise of carriers and airships, the resentment of aviation within the Navy, and Mitchell’s continuing assaults. Mitchell vociferously proclaimed that land-based strategic bombers had made armies and navies obsolete, an attitude that did not endear him to the conservative generals in the Army, much less to Moffett and the Navy. He also insisted on a separate, independent air force with control over all military aviation.
Moffett firmly believed that the Navy’s air arm should remain an integral part of the fleet and not be left to the mercy of land-based zealots, as had occurred under the Royal Air Force in Britain. He thus remained a steadfast opponent of such a unified air force and battled Mitchell continuously in public and in private. When the American Legion endorsed the idea of a separate air force, Moffett wrote to the Legion: “I think that the establishment of a separate, independent air force would almost ruin the national defense.” Furthermore, although the majority of the Navy’s pilots advocated their own naval air corps within the Navy, Moffett opposed it because airplanes and ships must work in concert under one fleet command. He preferred to educate the fleet commanders on the proper use of aircraft alongside all ships.18
Part of the interservice problem was that no centralized authority existed to establish defense policy, and the Army had reverted to its traditional prewar role of defending the continental United States. In addition, its airmen insisted that the aerial defense of the coasts was their province rather than the Navy’s. Moffett, by contrast, espoused the Navy’s position, which was global:
For the same reason that we need a Navy second to none to defend against attack from overseas, we need an adequate Navy to secure for us the freedom of the seas for trade and commerce. . . . The air defense of the country must be maintained a thousand or more miles at sea which will serve the double purpose of guarding us against attack and protecting our lines of commerce and communication with other nations.
Because the Army’s bombers could reach out only 250 miles, the immense task had to remain with the Navy.19
Not only did the Navy’s newer and better flying boats and carrier-borne planes promise to equal Army bombers in their ability to defend coastal areas, but Moffett also firmly believed that the dirigible could greatly extend the Navy’s range. Ever since 1919, British and German rigids had been crossing the Atlantic; such nonstop staying power offered the fleet a unique observation platform. “The rigid airship today fills a gap in transportation need [sic] that can be filled up by no other means,” Moffett declared in 1925, and he thus steadfastly insisted that experimentation continue to improve the rigids.20
Events in September 1925 marked a watershed in Moffett’s tenure. The rigid Shenandoah crashed in a storm over Ohio, and many of the crew were killed. A PN-9 flying boat was lost at sea in an attempt to fly nonstop between San Francisco, California, and Hawaii (actually, the crew sailed it into the islands in a remarkable ten-day voyage). Mitchell condemned the government and, by implication, the Navy, for allowing these tragedies to happen, whereupon Moffett threw his energies into destroying Mitchell’s credibility—a reaction shared by many of Mitchell’s own superiors in the Army, who silenced him with a court-martial. President Coolidge appointed the Morrow Board of distinguished aeronautical and engineering experts to establish a national aeronautic policy. Moffett and his advisers, most importantly Towers, presented careful evidence that so impressed the legislators that Congress instituted a five-year plan for naval, Army, and commercial aviation, including the creation of Assistant Secretary of Aeronautics posts in both services.21
Moffett dusted off a long-range development scheme devised by the late Henry Mustin that became the basis for naval aviation’s growth between 1926 and 1931. Under it, the Navy contracted for the purchase of a thousand new aircraft, a commensurate increase in pilot training, at least one new carrier, and two fleet dirigibles. With the support of his able assistants and department heads—who found that Moffett usually just signed anything they put in front of him without reading it—the airplane production goal was met one year ahead of schedule. This proved providential, because the onset of the Great Depression delayed construction of the fleet airships Akron and Macon and the carrier Ranger and also slowed other essential aviation programs. As to the coastal defense mission, CNO Pratt agreed in 1931 to let the Army have primary responsibility for it, a decision that angered Moffett and most of his fellow admirals, who continued to oppose and circumvent it all the way down to World War II.22
While Moffett fought the political wars in Washington, he depended upon the theoreticians at Newport and the airmen in the fleet to give him hard data showing exactly what aircraft could do at sea. Moffett corresponded with Admiral William S. Sims, who as president of the Naval War College tested the role of aircraft in war games. Through Sims, in 1922, Moffett had the first pilot assigned to the course and staff there: famed Commander Albert C. Read, who had commanded the NC-4 flying boat on the first transatlantic airplane flight three years before. Moffett wrote to and occasionally visited with successive U.S. Fleet commanding air admirals, who maneuvered their planes with the battleships in weekly exercises and the annual fleet problems. The most progressive of these men was Rear Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves, whose dramatic use of the Saratoga to attack the Panama Canal in Fleet Problem IX in 1929 demonstrated the offensive power of the carriers. Moffett and Reeves disagreed over many issues—for example, the location of an airship base in California—but they shared a mutual respect. Moffett was completely honest when he wrote Reeves in 1928 that “in this tactical work . . . I believe that you . . . can make more progress and accomplish more than anyone else.” Reeves’s successor, Rear Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, however, was a kindred soul to Moffett in every respect, and his expert chief of staff was Moffett’s own protegé, Jack Towers.23
For both his knowledge of aeronautics and his diplomatic skills Moffett served as a member of the London naval arms conference in 1930, but he was chagrined to encounter complete apathy toward carriers on the part of all of his colleagues except Yarnell. Not only did they not want to build up to the treaty limit for more carriers—perhaps four more—Moffett also had to fend off British attempts to reduce overall carrier tonnage. He finally succeeded in enlightening his colleagues, though only three other senior admirals favored the treaty as a viable solution to avert an arms race. Moffett feared the consequences if the United States did not build up to the limits allowed by the treaty; in his view, the General Board “and the reactionaries . . . are sinking the Navy and doing much more harm than the Japanese ever have or ever will do.” He believed that the United States should keep all of its battleships as long as Britain and Japan kept theirs, but he hoped that at the next conference he might scrap them all in favor of carriers and some cruisers. Moffett also came up with a compromise ship type, the “flying deck cruiser”—to him “the ship of the future”—to increase U.S. air strength at sea. The final treaty permitted it, but the U.S. Navy never adopted the idea.24
Unfortunately, the aftermath of the London conference left Moffett thoroughly disgusted with the Hoover administration. Because of the deepening depression, Hoover refused to build the Navy up to treaty limits—not only in carriers but in other ship types too. Moffett thus welcomed the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt late in 1932: “I believe that the stagnation that we have been going through in [the] Increase of the Navy will end soon after Mr. Roosevelt comes in. So much time has been lost by Mr. Hoover in trying to get Europe to disarm that we find ourselves in a position with nothing to trade.” In February 1933 he elaborated on this theme by delivering an address to Naval Academy alumni titled “The Decadence of the Navy.”25
Still in all, now nearing the end of his third term as Chief of BuAer, Moffett could take solace in the fact that he had achieved most of his goals, particularly in the knowledge that U.S. naval aviation was far ahead of Japan’s. He had produced a strong cadre of trained pilots and had fought, with decreasing success, to retain their flight pay. The carriers had proved their worth and were equipped with new, powerful airplanes. The patrol-bombing flying boat had evolved to the Consolidated P2Y, the last step before the sturdy PBY to come a year later. All battleships and cruisers carried catapult-launched seaplanes as gunfire spotters for the battle line.
The dirigible remained an unknown quantity, however, although Moffett hoped it would prove its utility in operations with the fleet. In the face of almost universal opposition to the rigid airships within the Navy, Moffett once wrote that “Putting over Lighter-Than-Air has been the toughest job I ever undertook.” Moffett loved to go for quiet soaring rides in the dirigible Akron out of NAS Lakehurst. During one such flight, on 4 April 1933, the big airship, unable to outmaneuver a violent storm, crashed into a cold night sea. Killed were most of its crew—and Admiral Moffett. The rigid airship program died with him.26
“Life is timing,” Moffett had often remarked; he believed that one should leave a job “when the flags were flying and the bands were playing.” And so he had done. He never experienced the dreary retirement he had expected on 1 November of that year. The new President had been disposed to reappoint Moffett later in April, although Roosevelt did not like the idea of such a short-term appointment for anyone. Moffett had wanted to stay on, especially to ensure the appointment of heir-apparent Towers as his successor. “I think all Aviation wants to see Towers here,” Moffett had written to Congressman Carl Vinson in 1932; but that would have taken some doing. King, already selected for rear admiral, had the support of Moffett’s opponents, whereas Towers was still a very junior captain.27
With Moffett’s death, King won out as his successor—and he went on both to direct the entire World War II fleet and to personally conduct the antisubmarine air war against Germany in the Atlantic. Towers, however, brought naval aviation into that war as Chief of BuAer from 1939 to 1942, and then he shaped the Pacific Fleet’s air doctrine for Chester W. Nimitz in the war against Japan.
William A. Moffett was indeed the father of modern naval aviation. Rooted in the golden age of the steel battleship but foreseeing the age of the Air Navy, he was a key transitional figure in bridging the two eras. As a peerless naval politician and manager, he had battled the service conservatism typical of naval hierarchies but had worked as much as possible within the system, where naval aviation belonged. His quiet, deliberate personality had impressed members of Congress repelled by Billy Mitchell’s harangues; and the achievements of his racing and long-distance fliers had won over the public. By deeds rather than words, Moffett used his stewardship over the naval air revolution to lay the foundations of a Navy that would dominate the seas during succeeding generations.
This essay was written before the publication of the definitive biography by William F. Trimble, Admiral William A. Moffett: Architect of Naval Aviation (Washington, D.C., 1994). Trimble’s work supersedes the privately published biography by Edward Arpee, From Frigates to Flat-Tops (Lake Forest, Ill., 1953).
Two autobiographies add important insights into the admiral during the late 1920s: Eugene E. Wilson, Slipstream: The Autobiography of an Air Craftsman, 2d ed. (New York, 1965), and Admiral J. J. Clark, Carrier Admiral (New York, 1967). Both men were naval aviators who served closely with Moffett in Washington, the former in engine design, the latter as personal pilot. The most analytical examination is in Clark G. Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy (Annapolis, Md., 1991); Towers served as Moffett’s alter ego between 1928 and 1933, even when Towers was no longer at the Bureau of Aeronautics.
In order to understand Moffett’s leadership role in the context of the interwar period, three sources are essential. Stephen Roskill’s two-volume work Naval Policy Between the Wars (London, 1968 and 1976), which divides at 1930, covers U.S. and British naval developments equally well, plus the interrelationships between the two navies. Several chapters are devoted to naval aviation. Fred Greene, “The Military View of American National Policy, 1904–1940,” American Historical Review 66 (1961): 354–77, succinctly treats the Navy’s strategic differences with the Army. John F. Shiner, “The Air Corps, the Navy, and Coast Defense, 1919–1941,” Military Affairs 45 (1981): 113–20, gives a balanced analysis of a very important aspect of this interservice rivalry.
1. Moffett to H. Ralph Burton of the National Patriotic League, 3 June 1930; Moffett to inventor and Aeronautical Society member Hudson Maxim, 6 February 1923; Moffett to Congressman Burton L. French, 5 March 1930; Moffett to Captain John H. Towers, 17 February 1930. These documents, and all others not cited herein as belonging to other collections, are from the William A. Moffett Collection, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy. The author is indebted to Professors William Reynolds Braisted and Paolo E. Coletta for their assistance in obtaining source material.
2. Moffett to Commander C. H. McMorris, Department of English and History, U.S. Naval Academy, in March 1933, quoted in William A. Moffett, Jr., “For the Good of the Ship,” Shipmate 48 (January–February 1985): 20; and Moffett to Captain Joseph Mason Reeves, 28 March 1926.
3. Moffett, “For Good,” 19; and Edward Arpee, From Frigates to Flat-Tops (Lake Forest, Ill., 1953), 3–31. Moffett’s father, George Hall Moffett, purchased arms for the Confederacy before enlisting and becoming aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Johnson Hagood in Lee’s army. His mother was Elizabeth H. Simonton Moffett. Moffett stood thirty-first in a class of thirty-four, although forty-seven had failed to complete the course. His classmates included future senior admirals Frank H. Schofield, Jehu V. Chase, Montgomery Meigs Taylor, Charles B. McVay, Jr., John H. Dayton, L. A. Bostwick, and J. L. Latimer. He married Jeannette Beverly Whitton in 1902; all three of his sons graduated from Annapolis and became naval aviators. Livingston Davis, special assistant to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, noted in his diary, 8 May 1918, after dining with the Moffetts at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, that Mrs. Moffett “is perfectly charming” and the captain “as fine a man as I ever met,” impressions shared throughout the Navy. Davis Diary, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.
4. Moffett, “For Good,” 19; and Arpee, Frigates, 32–44. Moffett’s early ranks were passed midshipman, 1890, ensign, 1892, lieutenant (junior grade) and lieutenant, 1899, lieutenant commander, 1905, and commander, 1914. Early tours of duty: screw steamer Pensacola, 1890–1891; cruiser Baltimore 1891–1892; sloop Portsmouth, 1892–1893; monitor Amphitrite, 1895–1896, 1904; Naval War College, 1896, 1907–1908; sloop Constellation, 1896; schoolship Enterprise, 1896–1898; steam sloop Mohican, 1898; Charleston, 1898; practice ship Monongahela, 1900; Kentucky, 1900–1901; gunboat Marietta, 1901; sloop St Mary’s, 1901–1902; cruiser Minneapolis, 1902; steam sloop Lancaster, 1903; battleship Maine, 1903–1904; commanding officer, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 1904–1906; Bureau of Equipment, 1906–1907; armored curiser Maryland, 1908–1910; lighthouse inspector, San Francisco, 1910–1912; and battleship Arkansas, 1912–1913, in Clark G. Reynolds, Famous American Admirals (New York, 1978), 221–22.
5. Moffett, “For Good,” 19; and Arpee, Frigates, 45–51, 55–70. Although Moffett received the Medal of Honor for his part in the Vera Cruz affair, Congress extravagantly awarded the medal to large numbers of participants hardly deserving of it, Moffett among them.
6. Moffett even came to know the underworld figures of the crime-infested city of Chicago so well that he joked he could have had anyone “eliminated” had he so desired. Mrs. John H. Towers to the author, 9 December 1978.
7. Moffett quoted in Towers’s unpublished reminiscences, John H. Towers Collection, Naval Historical Foundation, Library of Congress.
8. Arpee, Frigates, 66.
9. Moffett to William K. Wrigley, Jr., 29 July 1921; Arpee, Frigates 51–52; Henry C. Mustin Diary, April–June 1920, Mustin Collection, Naval Historical Foundation, Library of Congress; Theodore Taylor, The Magnificent Mitscher (New York, 1951), 68–69; and Elretta Sudsbury, Jackrabbits to Jets (San Diego, 1967), 63. Moffett to Lieutenant Commander M. A. Mitscher, 2 April 1929: “I have always felt greatly indebted to you not only for what you did yourself but for the advice and counsel you gave me” while serving at the Bureau of Aeronautics.
10. Admiral J. J. Clark, Carrier Admiral (New York, 1967), 36; and Arpee, Frigates, 83–96. Moffett relieved Craven on 7 March 1921, was designated Chief of BuAer by Harding on 25 July 1921, and assumed the post officially on 10 August 1921. Moffett to Captain Powers Symington, USN (Ret.), 16 February 1925: “When I relieved Craven, Craven wouldn’t speak to him [Mitchell].” Also, Moffett to Wrigley, 11 June 1921.
11. Inglis M. Uppercu, President, Uppercu Cadillac Corp., New York City, to Moffett, 31 May 1929; Moffett to Towers, 17 February 1930; and Towers, review of Edward Arpee’s From Frigates to Flat-tops, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 79 (October 1953): 1139. See Clark, Carrier Admiral, 35–36. To his friends, Moffett was known as both “Bill” and “Billy.”
12. Moffett to Reeves, 22 March 1926; and Moffett to Wrigley, 7 May and 13 October 1928.
13. Towers, review of Arpee’s From Frigates to Flat-tops, 1139; Moffett to Lieutenant Commander D. C. Ramsey, 19 November 1928; Moffett to Admiral Frank M. Schofield, 29 March 1932; and Moffett to Towers, 31 March, 29 April 1932.
14. George van Deurs, Anchors in the Sky: Spuds Ellyson, the First Naval Avaiator (San Rafael, Calif., 1978), 212; Clark, Carrier Admiral, 236–37; Eugene E. Wilson, Slipstream: The Autobiography of an Air Craftsman, 2d ed. (New York, 1965), 63–64; Moffett to Congressman Carl Vinson, 13 March 1932; and Moffett to Herbert Bayard Swope, 16 September 1925.
15. Wrigley to Moffett, 5 November 1924; Moffett to Wrigley, 7 May and 13 October 1928, 29 January and 26 November 1929; Moffett to Ramsey, 13 November, 7 and 11 December 1928; Moffett to Lieutenant Commander Claude Bailey, USN (Ret.), his academy roommate, 3 April 1929; and Arpee, Frigates, 114–19, 153–54. Moffett was reappointed Chief of BuAer on 13 March 1925 and 13 March 1929. He also battled over per sonnel with Leigh’s predecessor, Rear Admiral William R. Shoemaker, and again with Leigh’s successor, Rear Admiral F. Brooks Upham.
16. Moffett to Towers, 10 February 1930.
17. Moffett to Ramsey, 13 November 1928; Moffett to Rear Admiral H. E. Yarnell, 22 January 1932. Moffett was designated naval observer on 17 June 1921 and ordered to duty involving flying on 1 July 1922.
18. Arpee, Frigates, 88–100 and passim; Moffett to SecNav, “Naval Aeronautical Policy,” 10 August 1922; Moffett to Charles W. Schick, 3 October 1931; Moffett to French, 5 March 1920; and Moffett to Symington, 16 February 1925.
19. Arpee, Frigates, 110–12; Moffett to Porter Adams of the National Aeronautic Association, 5 January 1925; Moffett to CNO, 8 April 1928; Moffett to Captain E. S. Land, 1 July and 11 August 1930; Moffett to Towers, 22 August 1931; Fred Greene, “The Military View of American National Policy, 1904–1940,” American Historical Review 66 (1961): 354–77; John F. Shiner, “The Air Corps, the Navy, and Coast Defense, 1919–1941,” Military Affairs 45 (1981): 114–18; and John F. Shiner, Foulois and the U.S. Army Air Corps 1931–1935 (Washington, D.C., 1983), 52–54.
20. Moffett quoted in Arpee, Frigates, 200, 214–15.
21. Clark, Carrier Admiral, 16–17; and Arpee, Frigates, 102–4.
22. Wilson, Slipstream, 67–68; Moffett to Captain Adolphus Andrews, 24 February 1926; Moffett to Dwight Morrow, 2 March 1926; Shiner, “Coast Defense,” 116–17; and Shiner, Foulois, 54ff.
23. Moffett to Rear Admiral William S. Sims, 28 February 1922; Moffett to Reeves, 23 February 1928; and Reeves to Moffett, 12 March 1926: “You have the hardest job in the Navy.” Moffett had tried to have Rear Admiral John Halligan appointed to command the carriers in 1930, but Standley and Leigh reappointed Reeves for a second tour. Moffett to Rear Admiral J. L. Latimer, 3 May 1930. Reeves opposed Moffett, but in vain, on locating the new West Coast dirigible base at Sunnyvale rather than Camp Kearney near San Diego. Moffett to Captain J. H. Gunnell, 3 June 1930.
24. Statement by Moffett before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, 22 May 1930; Raymond G. O’Connor, Perilous Equilibrium: The United States Navy and the London Naval Conference of 1930 (Lawrence, Kan., 1962), 76–77; Arpee, Frigates, 169ff.; Moffett to Frank A. Tichenor of Aero Digest, 14 January 1931; and Moffett to Towers, 3 and 17 February, 31 March, and 2 April 1930. The only other admirals to favor the treaty were Pratt, Yarnell, and Arthur J. Hepburn. Moffett to Lieutenant Commander George D. Murray, 4 June 1930; Moffett to David S. Ingalls, 24 February 1930, 30 September 1931; and Moffett to Lieutenant A. R. Mead, his aide, 27 February 1930.
25. Moffett to Vice Admiral William H. Standley, 19 December 1932; and Moffett speech at annual dinner of the Naval Academy Graduates Association, New York, 17 February 1933. Also, see Arpee, Frigates, 164–65.
26. Moffett to Ingalls, 30 September 1931; and Arpee, Frigates, 232ff., 238ff.
27. Clark, Carrier Admiral, 50; Moffett to Towers, 9 and 25 July 1932, and 20 March 1933; Moffett to Ingalls, 26 July 1932; Moffett to Yarnell, 19 July 1932, Yarnell Collection, Naval Historical Foundation, Library of Congress; and Moffett to Vinson, 22 November 1932. Although Moffett preferred Towers, he held King in high regard, as in Moffett to King, 8 August 1930, and 18 November 1932. The date for Moffett’s reappointment would have been 22 April 1933, the fourth anniversary of his last confirmation by the Senate.
