Dear Folks,

By now your should realize that I am not a full lieutenant, especially as one of you ran into a j.g. who had been a j.g. for 14 months. He may have made the grade as of May 1, if there was an “all-nav” (for j.g.’s as well as lts. to lt. commander!). The V of VB stands for heavier-than-air, doubtless a survival of times when lighter-than-air was relatively more important than it is now. For Jack’s information a battleship is a BB, a carrier a CV (V?) (CLV for converted cruisers, CVE for small carrier-escorts), a heavy cruiser (8" guns) CA, a light cruiser (6" guns) CL, a destroyer DD, etc.

I got the San Diego letters all right by the way. The cap covers are either too big or too small. Don’t bother to send the book on west coast birds since I’ve other better ones (Hoffman and Peterson) arriving. If it’s already sent, I can give it to the library. Do deposit small dividends as they come in, Pa. I’m still with only what came out with me, but still have hopes of the other stuff arriving soon.

Good for Jack and his grades. He’ll do better in his studies than I did and could hardly help doing better in everything else too. I see no reason why he should let anything like an inferiority complex stand in his way either.

Well I’ve been pretty busy the last few days familiarizing myself in our new planes, the latest SB2Cs, which I hesitated to mention before. They certainly are a lot different to fly than our old SBDs. It’s exercise to maneuver them they’re so big, but they can really move, both climbing and in level flight. They dive like a ton of bricks, which may mean somewhat less accurate bombing than in SBDs, but we’ll see. At any rate I don’t find myself mourning for the latter as much as I expected, and that’s because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the 2C. It’s late so I’ll stop now. More about the squadron and perhaps the country later.

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