Word: tunner
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Willie the Whip." Thirteen years after his graduation from West Point came the assignment that determined the shape of Tunner's Air Force career. In June 1941 he was named personnel officer of the newly formed Air Corps Ferrying Command and promptly began to eat and sleep air transport. Within a year he was a colonel and had command of the Air Transport Command's Ferrying Wing, charged with delivering aircraft to U.S. and allied forces in every theater...
Novelist Oliver LaFarge, a wartime Air Force officer, remembers Tunner as "cold in manner except with a few intimates . . . brilliant, competent . . . the kind of officer whom a junior officer is well advised to salute when approaching his desk." One of Tunner's fellow professional officers expanded on LaFarge's theme. Said he: "Will's great fault is his impatience. That business of wanting something yesterday, not today, is a little hard to take." But Tunner's toughness, which has led some of his present subordinates to christen him "Willie the Whip," gave his men efficiency...
...Tunner's success with the Ferrying Command brought him a brigadier general's star. In August 1944 he was sent to India to take charge of the A.T.C. airlift which flew "the Hump" between Assam and Kunming in China. The month that Will Tunner took command, the Hump lift carried 23,700 tons of supplies; eleven months later, it moved 69,300 tons. Said Lieut. General Albert Wedemeyer, then commander of U.S. forces in China: "Tunner created an epic in air operation...
...provide the increased air supply required by the rapid U.N. advances after the Inchon landings, the Far East Air Force's General George Stratemeyer set up the Combat Cargo Command and called on the services of Will Tunner...
...Tunner set up headquarters at Ashiya air base in southern Japan, brought with him, as usual, assistants of long standing. Tunner's chief of staff Colonel Glen R. Birchard had been with him in Germany. Both his communications officer, Colonel Manuel Hernandez, and his operations officer, Colonel Robert ("Red") Forman, were holdovers from the days of the Hump. Says Tunner: "When we start a new airlift, we start in a hell of a hurry. It is a whole lot easier to start with people you know...