Eyewitness

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Twice, Lieutenant Commander Bob Dixon was an unwitting witness to tragic events. Having flown off the Lexington in the Battle of Coral Sea, he looked down to see the great ship's destruction. Less than a month later, in a cabin of the transport Barnett, right, he watched an officer hand a civilian classified information and thereby betray the Navy's special trust and confidence in him.

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V^hat the New York 77mcs-Pentagon Papers case ' ^was to the Vietnam War, the Chicago Tribune- apanese naval code case was to World War II. th ^e~^e.^Were differences, of course, and one was that e Tribune never was taken to court with the charge violating national security, obert E. Dixon was glad of that. As the eye- ness to how Stanley Johnston, a Tribune war d r^resP°ⁿd^ent, 40 years ago obtained the still- j_a ^atei* story that the U. S. Navy had broken the of^ese naval code just before the pivotal Battle Midway, which his newspaper splashed on its _re ^nt. P^a8^e of 7 June 1942, Dixon would have been t_e^^Ulre^ ^to testify in Chicago. That would have in-

i^caree⁶^                £^ooc* humor and quite possibly his

21^0 ^Was' ^‘^{s career} flourished. When he died on 75 ^ct°ber 1981 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, at age tired ^C,^{Was a mu}ch decorated rear admiral long re­bee ^{n t}*^le Korean War and the Big War, he had _rj_er^{n a na}val aviator, staff officer, and aircraft car- _ofA^CaP^tain: he had gone on to head the Bureau \ h_e^er°^naiJt'^{cs an}d to command a carrier division.

^^{rom w}h‘^ch he never fully recovered In a™^{01 l}° ^^au* down his flag in 1960.

°]j_na^^pr’.' 1975 on Currituck Sound in North Car- detail plug-casting for bass, Dixon told me in W_as ,°‘ his connection with the Tribune affair. I rp_0r . ^e editor of The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk’s said newspaper. “If you think it’s a story,” he ^Wa't till I’m dead before you write it.”

⁸°lfin ^never '‘^^ed attention. Even his fishing and 8 Partners found him to be essentially a loner.

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In the spring of 1942, Bob Dixon, a 36-year-old lieutenant commander, led the scout-bomber squad­ron of the USS Lexington (CV-2). Stanley Johnston was on board her as a Tribune war correspondent.

On 8 May, toward the close of the two-day shoot­out over the Coral Sea that set the stage for the Battle of Midway, the Lexington was sunk. Dixon flew off her twice and landed on her once that day. He was in the air, refueled for a second foray, when his ship, hit by five bombs and two torpedoes, began to stagger from internal explosions. He put down on the carrier USS Yorktown (CV-5), which was crippled, too, but would live to fight one more battle. Lexington and Yorktown fliers on the pre­vious day had teamed to sink the Japanese light carrier Shoho.

Last to leave the Lexington were, in order, a Ma­rine orderly; Commander Morton T. Seligman, the executive officer; and Captain Frederick C. Sher­man, the commanding officer. They had been pre­ceded by—among a stream of crewmen, airmen, and flag staff members—Rear Admiral Aubrey W. Fitch, the Lexington task group commander, and correspondent Johnston. The five added to survivor congestion in the cruiser USS Minneapolis (CA-36), which directed the rescue aided by three destroyers.

Those refugees were deposited at Noumea on New Caledonia. A second batch that included Lieutenant Asbury Coward III in the USS Hammann (DD-412), one of the rescue destroyers, got off at Tongatabu in the Friendly Islands. There, all 1,100 soon re­united, Dixon and other Lexington fliers who had been sheltered in Yorktown among them, for a return to the United States on two transports escorted by the cruiser USS Chester (CA-27).

Dixon was fortunate to be present. After his first takeoff on 8 May from “Lady Lex” in his SBD, he had sighted a Japanese two-carrier strike force mov­ing at 25 knots and stayed with it for almost three hours, ducking in and out of clouds to evade at­tacking Zeroes, while directing his air colleagues to the targets. After flying the 200 miles back, he had found his carrier listing and smoking and his air­plane, with its tanks down to seven gallons of fuel, being fired on by his countrymen in the screening cruisers and destroyers. He had dipped to within a foot of the water for the last of his run. “That’s the only time I ever made a landing approach from the starboard side,” Dixon reminisced that day on Cur­rituck. "I always have thought,” he added, “that our refueling opened the fumes that caused the ship to blow up a little later.”

Admiral Fitch and Captain Sherman rode the Chester home. Commander Seligman. Lieutenant Commander Dixon, and war correspondent John­ston were in one of the transports, the USS Barnett (AP-11), where they enjoyed the amenities of a com­mand suite normally reserved for a naval force com­mander and an embarked troop commander. Lieu-

on and on—and worried about what 1 ought to In the end 1 decided what the hell. Seligman

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senior to me and I'd keep my nose out of it.'

When the convoy reached San Diego after a two weeks of steaming. Dixon assumed temp°^ra ' duty with the aircraft carrier training group at * naval air station. His wife joined him at Corona J- Life was pleasant. Then, one day a young man cap ' identified himself as an FBI agent, and asked

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tenant Coward, who had been a Lexington air defense officer in charge of the aft batteries, also was in the Barnett, but in less opulent quarters.

“When we slipped out of port,” Johnston later wrote in his best-selling book. Queen of the Flat­Tops: The U.S.S. Lexington and the Coral Sea Bat­tle, "every man from the Lexington except eight wounded whose cases were judged to be too serious to be moved were in the convoy. Commander Sel- igman had insisted that only those whose lives would be endangered should be left behind. His word to the doctors again and again was, ‘I want to take every man home that’s fit for travel. The best med­icine you can give them is the knowledge that they're going home.’ ”

Seligman himself, battered by the explosions on the Lexington and exhausted from leading fire­fighting efforts after the damage control officer. Lieutenant Commander H. R. Healy. had died, had been put to bed temporarily by a Minneapolis doc­tor. Captain Sherman liberally praised his exec in the battle report he submitted to Washington.

By then, the U. S. Navy was down to two sound carriers in the Pacific, the USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Hornet (CV-8), and was under new chal­lenge. Admiral Fitch was ordered by Admiral Ches­ter W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific

Fleet, to assemble, upon reaching San Diego, a task group around the carrier Saratoga (CV-3)— freshly repaired at Puget Sound after being torpe­doed by a Japanese submarine while on patrol off Oahu—and to hurry back to sea. Nimitz had deter­mined that the Japanese were poised to strike at Midway Island, thanks to some brilliant code-crack­ing by a team of cryptographers led by Lieutenant Commander Joseph J. Rochefort and to the expert analysis of the enemy’s intentions by Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton. According to Nimitz biographer Professor E. B. Potter of the U. S. Na^­val Academy, “Nimitz authorized Layton to send an outline of the Yamamoto plan, without revealing the source of information, to certain interested radio addressees in a cipher ... for flag officers. Among the recipients was Admiral Fitch, who was en route to San Diego in the cruiser Chester to take command of the Saratoga [group].”

That message reached Stanley Johnston’s hands-

Potter, writing in 1976, believed it was placed there by Seligman. Had Seligman been with Fitch and Sherman on board the Chester, he hardly would have been privy to the Layton dispatch. But on board the Barnett, he was senior officer among the Lexington survivors. There, he arranged with th^e Barnett's commanding officer. Captain W. B. Phil' lips, to receive all fleet broadcasts within the tranS' port's decoding capability.

A Barnett officer delivered a flow of message^ all on original tapes, to Seligman. Dixon was elig'h^,e to read them and sometimes did, initialing the me^s' sage board, along with Seligman, as required. Ea^c message had to be returned to the officer messen ger. No copies were to be made.

Despite those security measures, Dixon would r^e call, Seligman regularly showed classified messagj-⁵ to Johnston. Perhaps he meant only to relieve th boredom of traveling deadhead across the Pacify- Seligman and Johnston were good friends. .

“It’s obvious now that the transport people ha no business decoding flag officer traffic,” Dixon sa* as we explored Currituck’s ponds and ditches r° bass. “1 was damn well disturbed when Johnst° took notes on the Midway plan—you would ha^v thought he was writing a book, the way he scribble

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what he knew about a leaked flag officer mes outlining the Japanese plan for attacking Mid war The Chicago Tribune, two days earlier, on 7 Jt* had published on its front page a column-long signed story with a Washington dateline of 6 ■*^u._ke headlined "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Stn at Sea,” and opening:        . j,

“The strength of the Japanese forces with the American navy is battling somewhere west Midway Island in what is believed to be the gr^ea ^ naval battle of the war, was well known in Amen ^ naval circles several days before the battle beg‘^j reliable sources in the naval intelligence disel° j here tonight.” Actually, the two-day struggl^e

H^e was, by all accounts, ^bo,h « brilliant and a ^{rave n}aval officer; but Commander Morton Selig- 'nan committed, at the very ^e°st, a grave indiscretion ‘at drove him from the ^avy at the height of the \^{ar a>,}d doubtless plagued "Mil his death in ^July 1967.

^on the 5th in an American triumph, sc k ^^aP^anese strike and invasion forces were de- ^nbed '^{n {}he article. While the article did not say _a ^a ^e Japanese naval code had been decrypted, y Axis agent who pondered its detail would sur- -j, ^{Se e}xactly what had happened and could warn ⁰ yo to change its signals.

^ ⁿ Washington, Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of q_u^dVa' Operations, ^was in a white fury at his head- thp^{drters w}hhe his staff frantically tried to discover his >'q^Urce °f the leak,” Thomas B. Buell wrote in He . ^ biography of King, Master of Sea Power.

summoned reporters to his office and solemnly the V ^t^^lem that the Tribune and its sister paper, the T^V.^ash'ⁿ8ton Times-Herald, which had carried Sec ^r-^une story, had criminally compromised U. S. _rea^ur'ty- Buell called it “one of King’s most violent ions during the entire war”—and King was no- ^t0n₀°tts for _a short fuse.

_Cj ⁿ Currituck Sound with me, Dixon smoked one stn^{drette a}^^{ter an}°ther. Doctors had ordered him to ttan ^S.^m°h'ⁿg’ hut he ignored them. “I told the FBI Com ^Was ‘^{n our} fl^{uarters on} the transport when Mid ^rnan(t^er Seligman showed Mr. Johnston the the ^ battle-plan message,” he said. “I told him Works—and I mean the works."

S_elj ^aen J went straight to the naval hospital, where gman had turned himself in, and reported to him. contender,* 1 said, 'the FBI asked me about a the ^a'f ^rnessa8^{e on} the transport and I gave him all I’m ^ntormati°n I had. The Midway plans message; rw ^SUre y°^u know what I mean.’ ” Dixon was very ^Pr?P^er about it.

into • ^Uts*d^e the hospital,” Dixon continued, “I ran Uuc]<ⁿ ^^r‘^er,d from the Tex, Commander [H. S.] f_0r ^w°rth, the air officer. I told him my news. I’ve surtn^{UenjUSt w}^^{at Duck}y ^sa'd’ hut it wasn’t reas- j_{n a} 8—something like well, my butt no doubt was w_as |Sht too. And I figured Ducky more than likely ^r*ght, that Ernie King would be taking my mea­surements [for a coffin] for failure to protest to Sel­igman on the transport or else failure to report his breach of security when we landed. I was mad as hell at the position I’d been put in.”

Young Lieutenant Coward, upon leaving the Bar­nett. received orders to report as flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral Monroe Kelly and proceeded to Casa­blanca. No FBI agent interviewed him, which was just as well, as he had not been a witness to the Seligman-Johnston collaboration. But when he learned of the Tribune affair, he could sort out what had happened. “I remembered very well the com­mander and Johnston had shared quarters,” he said recently at Whispering Pines, North Carolina. He spoke of Dixon with much admiration. “Everybody in the Lexington respected him. He was among the Coral Sea real heroes.”

Her passengers discharged, the Barnett sailed from San Diego for San Francisco. En route, Captain Phillips received orders to lock and seal his coding room and all dispatch files and, upon arrival, to ap­pear with his communications officer before a naval board of investigation.

From the array of senior officers awaiting the Bar­nett at her San Francisco pier, Captain Phillips and his ship’s company learned of the Tribune affair. The FBI and naval intelligence had determined that Johnston wrote the Midway story not in Washing­ton, as the dateline vowed, but in Chicago, relying entirely on information contained in the flag-officer dispatch. He had copied some sentences verbatim and repeated the message’s misspelling of some Jap­anese ship names. Within hours, Barnett scuttlebutt spread that Johnston and the Tribune publisher, Colonel R. R. McCormick, were in jail.

Neither was, but Buell wrote in his King biog­raphy, “McCormick and the Tribune had enemies in Washington for reasons beyond the Midway reve-

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lation. The Tribune and the Roosevelt Administra­tion despised each other. [Secretary of the Navy] Frank Knox's Daily News was a Chicago compet­itor. as well.” Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. who “also bitterly hated McCormick,” pro­posed to President Roosevelt a scheme to shut off the Tribune's newsprint supplies. Roosevelt refused.

Files of the Barnett's communicator. Lieutenant Daniel Bontecou, proved to be in good order. The board of investigation released the transport.

Having slapped together the Saratoga task group. Admiral Fitch meanwhile had sailed on 1 June for Pearl Harbor, where he would arrive too late to join the task forces that Rear Admirals Frank J. Fletcher and Raymond A. Spruance led to Midway and vic­tory. Dixon’s anxiety eased when he received orders to take command of the Saratoga's air group. He flew from San Diego in a Navy seaplane to board the carrier. But awaiting him at Pearl were orders from Admiral King himself to proceed to San Fran­cisco and on to Chicago prepared to testify in federal court. Distressed anew, Dixon turned about. In San Francisco, however, he was informed that the Navy, despite King’s fury, was dropping its case against Johnston and his employers. The Japanese Navy was continuing to use the cracked code, no spy ev­idently having come upon the Tribune or TiM?^s Herald story. The Navy judged it best not to dra" further attention to its embarrassment.

Not all was forgiven though. With the concur^­rence of the President and the Secretary of the Na^¹ Admiral King barred Seligman from promotion f°^r ever. A promising career—usually a carrier exec utive officer was on his way to flag rank—thus '^va ruined. Seligman retired in 1944 while the war '^vas at its height.

Knowledge of what the Tribune fuss was about u» even limited among grizzled members of the ”bro'^v shoe"—the naval aviation—fraternity. For ^,a stance. Rear Admiral Jack Tate, a colorful flier no'' dead, seven years ago charged in a letter to m Proceedings that Admiral King had unfa^,r^ “blacklisted" Commander Seligman, whom identified only by rank, for making “some remar . to a Chicago newspaper reporter he did not lik^e-

That set off a spate of replies in the Proceeding by old South Pacific hands offering various conjec­tures about Stanley Johnston's story. The most ¹ structive of them was by Rear Admiral Clyde J- ^va Arsdell. Jr., who had been chief engineer of the tra port Barnett.         _f

Almost completely accurate, too, were the m pages Clay Blair. Jr., devoted to the incident in

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carrier USS Valley Forge (CV-45), former

‘lent Victory, published by Lippincott the same year, g. . ’ ^as my interview with Bob Dixon. Although ^a>r did not mention the Barnett by name, he nailed ^ehgman with the lines, “The broadcast [the Ultra ^lsPatch on the Japanese order of battle for Midway] ^as Picked up on the transport taking the Lexington ^arvivors to the States. Among those who read it 3s Mort Seligman. Seligman showed the message ⁰ Manley Johnston.”

But the record remained incomplete until that spring _A^{ay w}hen Admiral Dixon, member of the Naval ^Cademy class of 1927, former commanding officer

^lef of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and former i °^a?^rnanc^^er of Carrier Division Four with his flag in h Forrestal (CV-59), talked about his ride Joh ⁶ ^^{arnett w}dh Morton Seligman and Stanley

“My Saratoga orders were cancelled when Ernie King ordered me back to the States to testify in the Tribune case,” he said. “Captain Sherman was pro­moted to rear admiral just about then and took com­mand of a carrier task group. He asked me to be his operations officer, and I caught up with him in the Enterprise. We later were in the Saratoga, the Bunker Hill (CV-17), and then Essex (CV-9). I hadn’t liked him when he was skipper of the Lexington, and I never did like him. But I did a good job for him.” There are a lot of things to remember about Bob Dixon. For one, he could be relied upon for candor.

Mr. Mason graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1933. From 1943 to 1946. he served in the U. S. Naval Reserve as a lieutenant in the USS New Hanover (AKA-73). He was the editor of The Virginian-Pilot for 17 years until his retirement in 1978, and he presently resides in Southern Pines, North Carolina.

“Scratch One Flat-top”