COPY
 
                                                           February 19, 1942
 
     The following letter was received by me from my brother,
Lt. Comdr. L. J. Dow, Communication Officer on the Staff of Comairbat 
(Vice Admiral Halsey). It is believed that the comments on the 
functioning of Navy radio equipment will be of interest. As the 
letter is personal it is requested that this memorandum be given no 
further distribution and that it be destroyed when it has served its 
purpose:
 
"First I want to say that when the story of this war is told, the 
equipment the Radio Division is giving us will deserve the greatest 
credit for winning the war. We use it, depend upon it, and have every 
confidence in it. Your radar and YE alone are a Godsend, and the 
fleet from the top to the bottom appreciate it.
 
As you probably know already we were lucky to just miss the December 
7th fiasco and after a few weeks going in circles we started paying 
the bastards back in the MarshalIs. We didn't just hit and run, we 
stationed ourselves in the midale of four of their bases and pounded
hell out of them for nearly twelve hours. Thanks to radar we missed 
being discovered the day before by one of their patrol planes, were
able to keep their bombers off with fighters, and were able to retire 
without getting hurt. We did shoot down a few antennas and probably 
would have shot down a couple more Jap suicide pilots with AA fire 
if we had been equipt with gunnery radars but outside of that we 
have nothing to gripe about. We broke every rule of warfare (and 
of communications) and in doing so were able to accomplish the thing 
we were sent to do. A few of the choice excerpts from the voice 
radio log are as follows:
     (Torpedo plane attack going in)
     - - - "You ease off to the right, that big one is mine, ease off
                    to the right"
          - - - "Take that cruiser underway off to the right"
     - - - "Tak 'em home boys, tak 'em home"
     - - - "Attack completed one plane missing (later showed up)"
     - - - "We sure got that big bastard didn't we Mr---"(interphone
                    conversation)
 
     (From a fighter who had withdrawn from attacking a Jap bomber due
      to own AA fire)
     - - -"You're shooting too high, too high"
     - - -"Now you're getting closer, but too far asterns"
     - - -"Aw tell 'em to cease firing and I'll shoot the son-of-a-
             bitch down" (He did)
     There is much to be told about all this.
 
This is a war of aircraft and submarines and light forces. Everything