Hurrah for the battleships, hurray for the carrier

Ships of the U.S. Fleet pictured at anchor at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during winter exercises in 1927. Visible amidst about 15 battleships at the top of the photograph is the nation’s first aircraft carrier and Warship Wednesday alum USS Langley (CV-1). Also visible are two Omaha-class cruisers, at least 17 destroyers, and two submarine tenders in the foreground with about 10 smaller and two large submarines.

The battlewagons shown includes the swan song for the aging USS Utah (BB-31), soon to be converted to a target ship and have her day of infamy, and her sister USS Florida (BB-30) which would be scrapped to meet treaty requirements in 1931.

The peninsula in the right foreground is South Toro Cay, where the drydock is still visible that was begun in 1904, but cancelled two years later.

The four-piper Wickes-class destroyer USS Mahan (DD-102) can be seen in the foreground still carrying her destroyer hull number though at the time she had been converted to a  light minelayer on 17 July 1920 and designated as DM-7.

This photo was around the time of Fleet Problem VII. This fleet problem was held March 1927 and involved defense of the Panama Canal. The highlight of the exercise was Langley’s successful air raid on the Panama Canal, which would lead to greater autonomy for carrier use in U.S. Naval doctrine

As noted in one study,

One of the few instances of the Langley overcoming its handicaps occurred in a joint Army-Navy exercise held immediately before Fleet Problem VII in early March 1927. The carrier, which was under the command of Admiral Reeves, was to support a naval attack upon the Panama Canal’s Pacific defenses.

Rather than merely accepting the standard role of fleet air defense and artillery spotting for the Langley and its aircraft, Reeves used his aircraft to escort and assist a strike by amphibious aircraft against Army airfields. Bad weather and aircraft problems limited the size of the strike, but in the eyes of the umpires evaluating the exercise, it succeeded in eliminating the Army aircraft tasked with defending the Pacific side of the canal.

According to Thomas Wildenberg, Reeves’ superiors attached a great deal of importance to the tempo of the Langley’s air operations since twenty aircraft had been launched in ten minutes. Later that month, during the course of Fleet Problem VII, Reeves launched an air attack upon enemy destroyers, but the aggressive nature of these two strikes were the exception and not the rule to the Langley’s career in the Fleet Problems.