An aircraft tender substituted for Langley and launched one amphibian representing twenty-four aircraft. Its attack on the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal coincided with Saratoga's strike on the Pacific side. The defending Army had not been told by the naval command about the substitution and still expected an attack by a full carrier squadron. It detected the lone amphibian but treated it as reconnaissance and made no interception attempt. After the mission, the pilot landed at an enemy field as instructed but failed to destroy his codebook. The event exposed both a failure to communicate the exercise's stand-in arrangements and a lapse in handling secret material.
Notable Point · 57:48-58:56
A surrogate carrier attack exposes a briefing failure
One aircraft represented a squadron, but defenders who had not been briefed on that substitution misidentified it and let the attack proceed.