Chain Reaction

The transfer of General Curtis LeMay from the Strategic Air Command to the Pentagon as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff set off an Air Force job-switching chain reaction. New top commands posted last week paraded a battle-seasoned new team of generals, showing both LeMay's increasing influence and the wealth of U.S. air talent. Chief among them:

Lieut. General Thomas S. Power, 51, picks up four-star rank as LeMay's hand-picked successor as boss of SAC. Long Island-born Bomber-Specialist Power quit the twelfth grade to work, joined up as an Army Air Corps flying cadet at 23, in World War II successfully led the first low-level B-29 fire raid on Tokyo for LeMay's long-range 21st Bomber Command. For six years he was LeMay's deputy at SAC. Restless, compact (5 ft. 8 in., 165 Ibs.), tiger-tense Tommy Power winds up three years as chief housekeeper of Air Research & Development, where he ably shepherded the growth of missile and jet design. Power won the SAC job over Lieut. General Frank F. Everest and old SACman Lieut. General Emmett (Rosie) O'Donnell Jr., Air Force personnel director, who were the nominees of outgoing Air Force Chief Nate Twining (soon to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).

Lieut. General Samuel E. Anderson, 51, director of the long-range Pentagon Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, succeeds Power as chief of Air Research and Development. Mild-mannered, high-strung West Pointer Anderson led the England-based wartime 9th Bomber Command, showed worried high brass how to use the stepchild B-26 Martin Marauder medium bomber as an effective tactical bomber. After top Pentagon staff jobs, he went back to command, led SAC's Eighth Air Force and later the Fifth Air Force in Korea.

Lieut. General Frank F. Everest, 52, deft right hand to Nate Twining (as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations) gains a star, becomes head of U.S. Air Forces in Europe. Blunt, tobacco-chewing West Pointer Frank Everest is the Air Force's outstanding global Ops (Operations) brain, commanded a heavy-bomber group in the South Pacific in World War II, later became a Pentagon planner. After duty in Alaska and with the Atomic Energy Commission, Everest, like Anderson, led the Fifth Air Force in Korea, came home to join the Air Force's inner circles.

Lieut. General William H. Tunner, 50, European Air Force boss, trading hats with Global Warrior Everest, takes over as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. "Terrible" Tunner, impatient, coldly efficient, has made his biggest mark as a top transport troubleshooter. West Pointer Tunner headed up the wartime Air Transport Command's ferrying division, later brilliantly steered the arduous Burma-China supply shuttle over "the Hump," the 1948-49 Berlin airlift, and the combat air supply in Korea. (A Tunner-made motto: "We can fly anything, anywhere, anytime.") The job of European Air Force boss was Tunner's first all-round command, broadened his background to make him a top-echelon candidate.

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