Queen of the Flat-Tops

$3.00

STANLEY JOHNSTON’S Queen of the Flat-Tops, which is surely a publisher’s title and not an author’s, is an almost breathless account of the aircraft carrier Lexington — 33,000 tons, 890 feet in length, 209,000 horsepower, 33 knots—in the Solomons battles. The author was aboard during the worst attacks; when the carrier was abandoned, he slid down a rope to a raft, and thence to a boat. He managed to save his notes. He was everywhere, and his account of the action of one of the largest and fastest warships ever built is a model of complete and astonishing accuracy. The phrase “charmed life” has validity in connection with this author. Just to read of the ship’s last hours causes one’s hair to rise and scalp to tingle.

The designers of the ship claimed, after she was converted from a battle cruiser, that her six hundred compartments rendered her unsinkable, that ten torpedoes would not do the job. They were justified. She had to be sunk eventually by United States destroyers. The explosions of her 100-octane gasoline started fires that heated her explosives and blew her apart topside. Even then she did not sink. As an engineering job she was magnificent, and her personnel was worthy of her.

The reader will wonder why he was not told in the press at the time of some of the deeds related here. Take the Tulagi affair. A scout by a miracle of luck saw the harbor full of Japanese ships and was not observed. The Lexington sped to the south of Guadalcanal, and her planes took off over the 14,000foot peaks and caught the enemy flat-footed. It was a clean sweep, a stunning victory, something to make our hearts leap. It was not featured in the papers. The present reviewer read of it, with amazement, in a British newspaper three months later.

Mr. Johnston has avoided the tendency towards “pulp Western” writing affected by so many newspapermen in the war. He lets the officers and crew tell their own stories as much as possible. But this reviewer remains overwhelmed by Mr. Johnston’s inexhaustible energy, good fortune, and competence as a reporter. He has told a great story. W.McF.