carrier fleet was reduced to the three and eight . One role the Navy could play in a conflict with the Soviet Union was participation in strategic bombing. In December 1947, Gallery wrote a top-secret memorandum on the subject. The idea was that instead of building a bomber with a range of , Gallery argued that it was a better idea to build one with lesser range that could be launched from an aircraft carrier. Radford noted that any target in the world was within of the sea. A carrier could be deployed quickly in a crisis, and did not require the establishment of expensive overseas bases. Gallery even went further than most Navy officers in arguing that strategic bombing with nuclear weapons should be the primary mission of the Navy. In forwarding the memo to Sullivan, Denfeld wrote: "I not only consider Rear Admiral Gallery's initiative in preparing the paper was commendable and proper, but that the paper itself demonstrates the type of constructive thinking that the Navy tries at all times to encourage." The memo was leaked to a syndicated newspaper columnist, Drew Pearson, who published it in The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Bulletin. Denfeld gave Gallery a private reprimand for making "an extensive and somewhat uncontrolled distribution of a classified document." This concept had severe practical limitations in 1948. The characteristics of nuclear weapons were not widely known at the time, but the Navy did have some expertise in officers who had served with the wartime Manhattan Project, principally Deak Parsons, John T. Hayward and Frederick L. Ashworth. Twelve Lockheed P2V Neptunes were configured for the atomic mission, and a squadron of them, VC-5, was formed under Hayward's command. A Fat Man atomic bomb was wide and weighed , and there was no aircraft in the Navy's inventory that could carry a bomb that wide, but the P2V could carry the slimmer Little Boy bomb. It was demonstrated that the P2V could take off from the three large Midway-class aircraft carriers with the aid of jet-assisted take-off JATO rockets. The ability to land on one was less certain and never attempted. This meant a one-way mission expending bomb, aircraft and crew. On 7 March 1949, Hayward flew a simulated atomic bombing mission against California in a P2V launched from the carrier off the East Coast. He dropped a pumpkin bomb on the Salton Sea test site