Word: spaatz
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...recommended a fast buildup to 70 groups by 1952, on the assumption that it would take the Russians until 1952 to get the atomic bomb. The 80th Congress, which Harry Truman still denounces, overwhelmingly approved the 70 group program. But in early 1948, over the protests of Spaatz and then-Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington, the President of the U.S. announced: "The Air Force needs 48 groups, not 70." The following year he impounded a special $615 million Air Force appropriation voted by the 80th Congress to get jet plane orders rolling...
...Force had to have first priority in funds and materiel if it was really to be the first line of defense. This was a deliberate personal decision on his part: he felt that nothing in air power history, from Billy Mitchell's public martyrdom to Tooey Spaatz's pleas to Congress, had achieved its purpose. Van vowed to keep his arguments "in channels" and in the secret councils of the Joint Chiefs. This did not prevent him from making broad public hints of the problem uppermost in his mind-how to break the paralyzing balance-of-forces concept...
...where he won a reputation as one of the service's best aerial gunners. In 1927 he was assigned to fly as Richard Arlen's double in the crash sequence of Wings. In 1939 he went into the Air Corps plans division, where General Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz was his "boss; was awarded the DSM three years later for his work on World War II air plans; became a brigadier general. In 1943, appointed Chief of Staff of the Northwest African Strategic Air Forces, won the DFC and Silver Star for combat missions over the Mediterranean; finally was grounded...
Witness No. 1 was General Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz, wartime boss of the bombing of Germany and first Chief of Staff of the separate Air Force. He began by reviewing the nation's reckless dismemberment of the world's greatest air force. In less than two postwar years, it had shrunk from 200 groups to 55, of. which only two were fit for combat. "In retrospect," said Spaatz, "you can see why Mr. Stalin felt pretty free to move around...
...Spaatz was just as concerned by the Administration's defense policy today-specifically, its decision last winter to stretch out the mobilization program, delaying achievement of the Air Force's goal of 143 wings from 1954 to 1956. In dollars alone, said Spaatz, the stretch-out was a $2 billion mistake. As "gambling with our security," it was "an inexcusable risk . . . Time is running out as far as we are concerned . . . We have not faced the fact that Russia is acquiring a stockpile of H-and A-bombs. Ruthless as they are, when they have that stockpile they...