Word: commander
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Neither myself nor my three teen-aged children have been guilty of the "crimes" Colonel Johnstone mentions, but I do not like living under the command of Hitler Jr. with his mass punishment...
...Weyland commanded the hands-tied Far Eastern U.S. and U.N. air forces in Korea, then, as head of the Air Force's Tactical Air Command, pioneered the high-mobility, nuclear-tipped, composite air-strike forces that got their showdown test when they were flown to support U.S. diplomacy in Lebanon and Quemoy (TIME, July 28, 1958 et seq.). Said he: "TAC never has had priority, like SAC. TAG had to make do with what it could get, and by God, we have...
Blond, long-legged (6 ft., 185 Ibs.) "Opie" Weyland, California-born Texas A. & M. graduate, made his first general's fame as head of the XIX Tactical Air Command, which supported General George S. Patton Jr.'s Third Army on its advance through France and Germany. High point: Weyland's planes protected Patton's southern flank during the first streak to the Seine ("You do the worrying about my flank," said Patton), strafed 20,000 German troops so mightily that they surrendered to U.S. airpower...
Slim (6 ft. 2 in., 165 Ibs.) "Pat" Partridge graduated from West Point in 1924, rose through World War II bomber service in Europe with Generals Jimmy Doolittle and Curtis LeMay and postwar duty in the Pentagon to command the Fifth Air Force under Weyland in Korea. There Partridge won the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry in action in an unusual spot for an air commander. In a light observation hedgehopper, he conducted personal reconnaissance over U.N. forces advancing against Pyongyang and Chinnampo, completed his mission even though his plane was hit repeatedly by enemy ground machine-gun fire...
Partridge succeeded Weyland as Far East Air Force commander in chief in 1954. Three years later, as head of the U.S.-Canadian interservice North American Air Defense Command, he tried to clean up the classic NORAD interservice rivalry, succeeded in getting the Joint Chiefs to back up the NORAD commander with some (but, by Partridge's lights, not enough) additional powers...