Quote:
Originally Posted by keith A
I will spend the day tracking down the VT-10 War diary. I expect I will find the reason Norton returns to surface duty. No Purple Heart among the medals so it may be a non-battle injury.
K
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Don't get side tracked into thinking or jump to the conclusion that an aviator commanding or assigned to a surface vessel is no longer an aviator. Carriers, for example, can only, by law, be commanded by naval aviators, in the war years including naval aviation observers, and, now-a-days, naval flight officers - in fact, technically, all aviation commands/activities must have an aviator or NFO as a commander.
In order get command of a carrier, you need some experience with a deep-draft command; by the mid 1950's that usually meant an oiler. My father, for example commanded USS Salamonie (AO-26) as a deep draft command, before a a year later, commanding USS Ranger (CVA-61). There are more than just a few aviators who commanded or simply served in a surface warship with no aviation duties. That doesn't mean they were not designated aviators, it simply means they were assigned somewhere in other than aviation duties, or in the vernacular, "not in duties involving flying" as one's orders might pointed read. Just as when assigned to a aviation related activity, a naval aviator's order would usually specifically read "duty involving flying."
Norton's designator was 1310, 1=line officer, 31=naval aviator, 0=ensign or above. The USN all along insisted that it's aviators be line officers, though if you look hard you can find the occasional medical corps or engineering corps officer and even at least one chaplain who could wear naval aviator's wings.