Word: vandenberg
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...well-balanced team," said Vandenberg in Dallas in 1949, "is not one in which all the players are of equal size or weight . . . [It] is one which is organized and trained ... to counter an opposing team's strength and take full advantage of an opposing team's weakness. This is the kind of balance we want in the forces that defend our nation...
...straining to build to the 70 groups which it then deemed necessary for minimum U.S. defense. In Korea air power was forbidden to strike enemy supply dumps across the Yalu or to strike at the menacing buildup of enemy planes and bases. At the MacArthur hearings last year, Vandenberg stepped lightly around the MacArthur issue. But he managed to strike another solid blow for air power...
...While I was and am today against bombing across the Yalu," Vandenberg testified, "it does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that I might not be for it tomorrow . . . Hitting across the Yalu, we could destroy or lay waste all of Manchuria and the principal cities of China if we utilized the full power of the U.S. Air Force . . . But... in my opinion we cannot afford to ... peck at the periphery as long as we have a shoestring Air Force . . . The fact is that the U.S. is operating a shoestring Air Force in view of its global responsibilities...
Profane Blast. The term "shoestring Air Force" irritated Congressmen who had appropriated a total of $35 billion for the U.S. Air Force since 1946. But in terms of the enemy's newly revealed seven-league boots, the point was all too valid. All last summer Vandenberg tried to make the other Joint Chiefs see the peril as he saw it. Sometimes, after a no-progress session, he would come back to his office, hurl his cap on a chair, and let loose a profane blast of despair...
...first the Air Staff wanted 163 wings (as the Air Force now describes them) by 1954, and Vandenberg pleaded for it in JCS meetings. The other members of the JCS balked. For one entire week last fall Vandenberg sat at his desk and glared moodily at the figures. Then one day he strode through the Pentagon's web to the closely guarded sector where the Joint Chiefs of Staff hold their regular meetings. In his quiet, earnest baritone he went over his case again & again for Chief of Staff Joe Collins of the Army, Chief of Naval Operations Bill...