Navy Chennault

A handful of top-flight naval aviators in a Navy building projection room in Washington last week intently watched the latest Walt Disney film. It was no Donald Duck comedy they were watching, but the newest training film for Navy fighter pilots. It was also another achievement for a veteran airman whom Navy flyers recognize as their best fighter tactician.

Lieut. Commander John Smith Thach, whose rich voice came from the sound track, has busied himself with air tactics since the early '30s, with a combination of studious analysis and flying virtuosity rarely found in fighter pilots. Result of this preoccupation aloft and on the ground is that today Navy fighters call Thach "the Navy Chennault" and universally use his tactics. They know they are good; Thach himself proved them in battle.

Arkansas-born John Thach entered Annapolis (in 1923) with the fixed conviction that a handful of sea water was blue, emerged four years later with a burning urge to fly, which the Navy speedily gratified. Once bewinged, he became a crack aerial marksman.

With other youngsters, like Lieut. Commander "Jimmy" Flatley, he shouted for more training in deflection shooting -- i.e., "leading" the enemy plane, as a hunter fires ahead of a speeding duck to intercept his course. From gunnery it was a short step to tactics--the science of placing and maneuvering planes to do the most damage to the enemy.

The Two-Plane Section. By constant experiment and discussion (often by long and argumentative letters), Thach, Flatley and other young airmen finally agreed that the old-fashioned three-plane "V" section was outdated. Their substitute: a two-plane section which was nimbler, deadlier.

Not until last year, when he was 37 --and senile by R.A.F. and U.S. Army fighter-pilot standards -- did "Jimmy" Thach have a chance to prove his point. At the Battle of Bougainville, his Fighter Squadron Three rose from the Lexington against 20 Jap planes, knocked down, 19, lost none. (Fighter Three's crack-shooting "Butch" O'Hare got five in six minutes.) Thus the two-plane section was proved.

The Four-Plane Division. Flatley's progression from this was to a division of six planes; Thach argued for four. Mid way settled the argument, in Thach's favor. Escorting a torpedo squadron, Jim my Thach led a. six-plane division from the Yorktown. More than 20 Zeros swarmed down, nailed two of his six, but the other four, flying in the unbroken formation that modern battle demands, picked off three Zeros and fought through. (Fighting Three's record in that battle: 70 Jap "probables" against seven lost.) That day, for the first time, Fighting Three proved another tactic of its leader: the Thach Weave, a protective maneuver (secret) based on the four-plane division.

And Thach got handsome recognition: his second Navy Cross (for valor in battle) and the Distinguished Service Medal (for leadership, pilot-training and the development of combat tactics).

Today the "Thach Weave" and the four-plane section are standard and regarded by the Navy as the ideal use of the fire power and ruggedness of its Grumman Wildcats against the nimble but destructible Zero. When the Navy got a newer fighter--the Vought Corsair--it found weaving good for it, too. Said one Marine pilot on Guadalcanal: "We knock them off with the Thach Weave."

The Beach. After Midway the Navy brought Jimmy Thach home, set him down to a job of rewriting fighter tactics, teaching gunnery and tactics at Jacksonville, planning a dozen training films. Good-natured Jimmy Thach went at it earnestly, flying, shooting, lecturing and jotting down notes in his little black book (where once he listed his squadron in the order he thought they would be killed, found his predictions, based on tactical skill, generally correct).

But by now the word has gone around the Navy that, at 38, Jimmy Thach has had enough of the beach for a while. He wants to get out to battle, update tactics once again, because he thinks that in battle experience counts for more than youth. (Flatley is 36, O'Hare 28. the Navy's famed dive-bomber Gus Widhelm 34.)

Thach's chances of seeing action again are excellent. He may even get a chance to prove his own theory of how the Jap can be beaten: "With a couple of dozen aircraft carriers and supporting task-force units, and with enough marines to carry out landings, I'm convinced we can cut a path across the Pacific . . . right to Japan. And make it stick."

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