War of the Nations

While my sons, James and Louis, were in the process of transferring from one US Navy assignment to the next, I was still at work in the White House. The Republication Party had been successful in electing its candidate, William Howard Taft. It convened to nominate a successor to my brother-in-law, Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy endorsed his secretary of war, Howard Taft. The Republican platform celebrated the Roosevelt administration’s economic polices such as the keeping of the protective tariffs and establishment of a permanent currency system under the Federal Reserve. It championed enforcement of railroad rate laws, giving the Interstate Commerce Commission authority to investigate interstate railroads and reduction of work hours for railroad workers as well as general reduction in the work week. In foreign policy, the platform supported a buildup of the armed forces, protection of American citizens abroad, extension of foreign commerce, vigorous arbitration, a revival of the US Merchant Marine, support of war veterans, self government for Cuba and the Philippines with citizenship for residents of Puerto Rico. In other areas, the platform advocated court reform, creation of a federal Bureau of Mines, creation of rural mail delivery, environmental conservation and greater efficiency in national public health agencies. The United States Navy reported, in 1909, that it had an aeronautics division. I think the only reason that it was reported, was because England’s war office had undertaken the aeroplane branch of aeronautics. Four Valkyrie bi-wing planes were added to the dirigibles housed at Barrow, England. These bi-wings were patterned after the German Valkyrie that Louis had flown out of Denmark. We played catch-up again. We had an aviation school at Annapolis, with winter quarters in San Diego. The Curtis and Burgess-Wright hydro-planes had been flight tested on both sites. On February 17, 1909, Mr. Glen Curtis flew from North Island to the USS Pennsylvania, lying at anchor. He landed in the water, along side. His plane was hoisted out of the water and onto the deck of the Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania put to sea and some time later she attempted to place the hydroplane back in the water. Mr. Curtis was supervising the operation from the deck of the Pennsylvania and survived the experiment because he was not inside the plane when it sank to the bottom. The most common joke inside the Navy in 1909 was, “How do you sink a US Navy Hydro-plane? Answer, put it in the water!” In Glen Curtis’ defense, he had merely applied the required floating apparatus to a wheeled plane. His engineers had not designed the attachments necessary to convert his machines into an effective hydro-areoplane. Within a few months, the Curtis hydro-plane was capable of alighting on and starting from either land or water. Additional modifications came within a year for a second pilot or navigator seat with dual controls which allowed the shifting of the steering tiller to either seat while in the air. Tests were immediately begun with Burgess-Wright machines. The purpose of the tests were to see if a pilot could rise above the water from a stationary position, make a flight to and along side a ship, hoist the machine aboard, put to sea and launch again to continue a flight. Lt. John Rodgers was the first Navy flyer to accomplish this simple task. He stated that his experiments convinced him that it is impractical to launch a plane from a ship with a crane. The flight must be made directly from the deck of a vessel, either by the use of a monorail catapult or some other contrivance. When I read this report, to summarize for Teddy, I thought, my father predicted this from his college lecture during the last course that I took from him at Annapolis. How he would have loved to see Lt. Rodgers and his hydro-plane. President Taft met with me March 4, 1909, and we agreed that the work of the Office of Naval Counter Intelligence should be expanded into a national agency so intelligence could be shared by all cabinet level secretaries in his administration. It took over a year to graduate enough agents from ‘the farm’ to form a world wide intelligence gathering organization. I became the first director of the National Intelligence Agency. My duties would be exactly what I had been doing for Teddy. I would keep my office in the White House and begin each working day with a security briefing for the president. My ability to read and remember data and then condense it would really be tested during the next few years. .