1 Call to Arms In mare in coelo (On the sea and in the air) --Motto given to USS Intrepid on her commissioning day August 16, 1943 Capt. Thomas L. Sprague, USN, squinted in the harsh sunlight. It was a typical Chesapeake summer early afternoon, the humidity clinging to the atmosphere like a damp blanket. Sprague could feel the perspiration trickling beneath the starched white cotton of his service dress uniform. For nearly three decades Tom Sprague had waited for this day. He had served for what seemed a lifetime in a budget-slashed, promotionless, peacetime Navy. Finally Sprague was getting his first major command.

And what a command. Sprague's new vessel was one of the most formidable warships ever built, the third example of the fast new Essex-class aircraft carriers. With a full complement of a hundred warplanes and nearly 4,000 crew, the new carrier displaced 36,000 tons and could slice through the ocean at a speed of 33 knots. Her name was Intrepid, and she was the fourth U.S. Navy ship of the line to bear the distinguished title. This new Intrepid was named in honor of an armed ketch that had fought with distinction at Tripoli in 1803. She was constructed at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co.

in Virginia. Her ceremonial keel-laying in December 1941 had nearly coincided with the Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. Getting Intrepid into service became a matter of national urgency. Instead of the normal three years, Intrepid had to be ready for duty in a year and a half. When Tom Sprague entered the Naval Academy in 1913, he couldn't have guessed the historical twists and reversals that would shape his career. He received his commission in 1917, just in time to see duty as a surface officer escorting convoys across the Atlantic in World War I.

Correctly sensing the future importance of naval aviation, he applied for flight training and was designated a naval aviator in 1921. During the doldrums of the twenties and thirties, Sprague rotated through a succession of staff jobs, commanded a scouting squadron, became air officer aboard the carrier USS Saratoga, and eventually rose to the post of superintendent of naval air training at Pensacola. In 1940 he was assigned as executive officer of the carrier USS Ranger, then briefly commanded the newly constructed escort carrier USS Charger. Even in the plodding, peacetime Navy, it was clear that Tom Sprague was an officer on his way up. On this hazy August day, Sprague knew he ought to feel a glow of contentment. This was the crowning moment of a successful military career, the prize he had dreamed about for his entire adult life. But the sweetness of the moment was tinged with a sense of foreboding. Hanging like a dark cloud over the celebration was the news from the Pacific.

Four large American aircraft carriers had been lost in battle with the Imperial Japanese Navy. In May of the previous year, USS Lexington was torpedoed and sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea. USS Yorktown was lost to Japanese bombers and torpedo planes in the Battle of Midway. USS Wasp, torpedoed off Guadalcanal, went down in September 1942. A month later USS Hornet, the carrier from whose deck Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle's raiders launched the first attack on Japan, was sunk by dive-bombers and aerial torpedoes in the Battle of Santa Cruz Island.

The Navy was desperately short of aircraft carriers. No other U.S. military service was as steeped in centuries-old tradition as the Navy. The ritual of commissioning a new ship, like many U.S. Navy traditions, was adopted from the British Navy. It was a symbolic birthing, a way of giving "life" to an inanimate, newly constructed vessel.

Tom Sprague, as traditional as any sailor of his generation, was sticking with the script. More than a hundred guests--women in long skirts and sun hats, men in summer suits and in the uniforms of all the s.