"Guys Who Get in Their Way"

The dirty work fell to Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric. On Sunday afternoon he drove to the official quarters, atop Observatory Hill in northwest Washington, of the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations. There he informed Admiral George W. Anderson Jr. that he would not be reappointed when his present two-year term is up in August.

Anderson was stunned. So was most of the Navy. "A military man has really got to bow to this Kennedy crowd,'' said an admiral who is close to Anderson.

''Guys who get in their way get knocked off." And Anderson had been getting in the way of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for quite a while.

A Question of Style. Anderson was critical of McNamara's centralized style of management. During last October's Cuba crisis, when McNamara insisted on supervising the smallest details of the U.S. blockade, Anderson protested that operations should be left to the military professionals. Last February, Anderson testified before Congress that the Navy needed more men, more ships and more planes than McNamara's budget provided. Going over McNamara's head to the President, Anderson argued that the Navy should have a greater say-so about its spending programs. In the TFX controversy, Anderson spoke out against McNamara even more bluntly than General Curtis LeMay, who, it was announced, will be reappointed as Air Force Chief of Staff. Anderson insisted that military men, not civilians, should decide on specifications for combat aircraft. Finally, Anderson did not get along with Navy Secretary Fred Korth, who recommended that he be dropped as the Navy's chief.

To succeed Anderson, President Kennedy named Admiral David Lamar McDonald, 56, commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe. A member of the Annapolis class of '28, McDonald has served as an aircraft-carrier commander (Mindoro and Coral Sea), as director of air warfare in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations and as deputy assistant chief of staff at SHAPE headquarters in Europe. In July 1961, he took over from Admiral Anderson as commander of the Mediterranean Sixth Fleet, a job that McDonald saw as that of "a kind of roving ambassador of good will." Last month he was promoted to admiral over 27 more senior vice admirals and assigned the European command.

Reminder from the Boss. When McDonald takes over as Navy chief in August, President Kennedy said last week, Anderson will "continue to serve the Gov ernment in a position of high responsibility." That position will probably be a diplomatic post in the Mediterranean area, where Anderson can continue to put his naval experience to use. But whatever Anderson's new job, the shift reminded the Pentagon once again that McNamara means to be in absolute charge. Once a decision is made, McNamara said recently, "by God, I expect everyone to fall in line. You can't run a military organization with divided authority."

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