Word: pentagonals
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Issued in regimental lots from the Pentagon last week were reports about impending changes in the top command of the U.S. armed forces. The rumors varied in detail, but nearly all agreed that 1) Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan F. Twining, 59, will become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Admiral Arthur Radford's term expires in August, and 2), Twining's replacement will be Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Thomas White, 55, a skilled Pentagon hand since 1948. Missing from all the gossip lists was the name of Strategic Air Commander Curtis LeMay...
What worries the Pentagon is that in the horsepower race the rest of the industry seems to be fighting a losing competitive battle. General Electric, which claims to have delivered more jet engines than any other manufacturer, lost its bread-and-butter J47 engine contract with the end of B-47 medium-bomber production. To replace it, G.E. has a new J79 engine (about 15,000-lb. thrust) for Convair's supersonic B58 bomber and Lockheed's F-104A Starfighter. Yet the four-jet B58 Hustler is far from quantity production, and the F104 program may be slowed...
...Pentagon last week rolled a thunderous indictment of an obscure but important Army officer, Colonel John C. Nickerson Jr., 41, field coordinator for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at top-secret Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala. Colonel Nickerson was ordered to face a Third Army court-martial on 18 tough specifications charging that he 1) included secret information on the U.S. missile program in documents sent to unauthorized civilian businessmen and newsmen (as well as-although the charges did not say it-to several Alabama Congressmen), 2) had violated national-security laws by sending three secret documents to Managing Editor Erik...
Searching the Attic. Pearson's legman took Pearson's copy of the Nickerson memorandum to the Pentagon to see if he could stir up an Air Force rebuttal. But the Air Force refused to rise to the bait, and notified the Army; the Army ordered the Pearson copy confiscated. Then Secretary of the Army Wilber Brucker began padding around Capitol Hill in person picking up other copies from Alabama Congressmen. Back at Redstone, Army MPs burst into Nickerson's ante-bellum (1817) home, searched it from attic to basement, refused to let anybody...
...press conference, Secretary of Defense Wilson vaguely remarked that production of the B-52 intercontinental bomber might soon "be up for reconsideration," depending on the performance of Convair's newer, supersonic B58 Hustler bomber. Though Wilson's statement did nothing more than reflect the routine Pentagon procedure of constantly reappraising air needs, the Wall Street Journal blew it up into a long scare story headlined: PENTAGON WEIGHS FUTURE OF B-525 . . . and the Dow-Jones ticker carried a bulletin about the possible replacement of the B-52. In little more than an hour, Boeing dropped 3½ points...