The Three Kibitzers

It was payday for the 3,000 men aboard the U.S.S. Midway, anchored off the French Riviera. One by one, 16 bluejackets disappeared into a storage room below the carrier deck for a little forbidden pleasure. There they got out their bankrolls, settled to their knees. The soft clack of dice and the whisper of plaintive invocations went on all night until the kitty reached some $3,000. Then the door opened, and three more bluejackets pushed in. But these were different: hoods masked their faces, they whispered commands, and they waved pistols. The crapshooters were ordered to stand facing the bulkheads. The three swept up the $3,000 lying on the floor and fled, locking the door behind them.

For five days, while rumors of the big haul spread through the Mediterranean fleet, the Midway's officers publicly dismissed them as poorest scuttlebutt, and privately combed the ship's company for the robbers. Finally Rear Admiral A. K. Doyle, red-faced, made public the bluejackets' story. The mighty 45,000-ton Midway, protected by 137 planes, 180 guns and thousands of tons of steel armor-plate, had been taken from the inside. Nobody knew who the three robbers were or where the $3,000 had gone.

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