Early Birdman

In 1910 Ensign John Henry Towers was a young man with a consuming idea: he thought the Navy should have an air arm. When Congress prodded the Navy into an experimental aviation program, Jack Towers was one of the first three pilots trained. He survived accidents in the air, his two colleagues (thus becoming Naval Aviator No. 1), and his disappointment over the kicking around the air service got from the battleship admirals.

His fixed idea on the importance of aviation won him few friends among the top brass. To his seniors on the quarterdeck he was a baleful-looking, bulldog-stubborn revolutionist, a man to be viewed with suspicion.

Twice the battleshipmen passed him over for promotion; a third time he probably would have been out. But President Roosevelt saved him by jumping him to Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics.

Turn of the Wheel. He was not master of his house in BuAer. He got no credit for cutting administrative corners to procure new planes which paid off after Pearl Harbor: the Dauntless, the Avenger, the Hellcat. He became Commander, Air, Pacific (in 1942) and it looked like the fulfillment of his dreams, until it turned into desk duty. When a commander was picked for the great central Pacific offensive in 1943, not Jack Towers but Battleshipman Raymond Ames Spruance got the job.

In July 1945 Towers was named boss of Third Fleet carrier forces. It was his chance at last to show his mettle in a combat command with the air weapon he had done so much to forge. But the Japs surrendered before he could strike a blow. Last week to Birdman Towers came as much recognition and vindication as he could now expect; with an admiral's four stars, he was named to succeed Spruance as Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas. Naval aviators, already winning key posts in Washington (TIME, Dec. 10), were at last, if tardily, getting some of the top sea commands. Raymond Spruance headed ashore to run the Naval War College.

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