Bosworth, Allan R. "Tin-Can Sailor".

Collier’s tag line: “Belated education of a destroyer man who didn’t like planes.” The “tin-can sailor”in this case is Admiral Philip Porter Dane, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, which is engaged in war games several hundred miles off Hawaii. He is eagerly awaiting an upcoming reunion with his daughter who, with many other Navy dependents, is also in the vicinity — en route to Honolulu aboard the liner CITY OF SAN FERNANDO. In a heavy fog, the liner collides with a tanker and the ensuing inferno threatens all aboard her. Dane dispatches two destroyers to come to the aid of the passengers and crew, but then looks on helplessly as fire-charged seas completely surround the liner and seem to make rescue impossible. At the last moment, a host of Navy airplanes arrive on scene, and their pilots use the planes’ propellars to fan the flames away from the liner so that destroyers can effect their rescue. O.K., let’s face it: Bosworth was really stretching it with this plot!