The New Dimension

(See Cover) Much is required of those to whom much is given. So viewed, the ability speedily to put forth the nation's power . . . is one of the clear duties involved in the Christian word "watchfulness"--readiness for the call that may come, whether expectedly or not.

--Alfred Thayer Mahan Rear Admiral (1899)

Somewhere, some time after MIG alley, the change came. For years the U.S. had glimpsed promises of a new U.S. Air Force in the making: a solitary jet streaking the far sky with a white contrail, reports of victorious dogfights between U.S. Sabre jets and the MIG-15 in Korea, a thundering atomic-bomb test or the anguished plea of an Air Force spokesman in Washington for more funds. But the Air Force had lacked that elusive quality that glues the Army, Navy and Marine Corps into cohesive units. Then, by the beginning of this year, it was suddenly clear that all of the experiments, all of the fighting, all of the training had coalesced. The U.S. had more than jets and bombs and intrepid pilots; it had, in the U.S. Air Force, the world's most powerful modern fighting outfit.

Specifically the Air Force could claim:

P: An existing force of no wings, with plans laid down for a buildup to 137 wings by 1957.

P:An all-jet fighter and interceptor force; a bomber force of 40 wings with a backbone of jet B-47 bombers and the intercontinental 6-36s--with complete conversion to jet bombers scheduled by 1958.

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P:Fleets of aerial tankers based strategically around the free world, actually refueling fighters and bombers aloft at the rate of one every five minutes around the clock.

P:Operational guided-missile squadrons, stationed in Germany (TIME, Jan. 25), ready to use the ground-to-ground Mata dor as necessary.

P:Major bases strung around the periphery of Communist Europe and Asia.

The change in the Air Force was the sum of all of these and a new character, too. For one thing, the great new speeds, altitudes and precisions of jet flying had given the Air Force a stamp of its own -- a skill to rival the technical proficiency of the Navy. For another, the new Air Force was a rich mixture of two generations of flying men: combat-tested elders teamed with youngsters born under the sign of Mach. 1.

Rearguard Disbanded. Underlying the big change was a new attitude of mature, professional self-confidence. It showed itself along the muddy fighter bases behind the lines in Korea, at bomber bases in North Africa, in Alaska, Greenland and Britain, at training bases in Arizona--and in the Pentagon itself. The attitude was best symbolized by a blue-clad West Pointer who wears the four stars of the Chief of Staff of the U.S Air Force--a broad-shouldered airman with grey curly hair parted down the middle, black eyebrows, a strong nose and a big jaw--named Nathan Farragut Twining.

Four-star General Twining presides over the Year i of the new jet Air Force. The illustrious air generals who went before him were the revolutionaries. From Billy Mitchell through "Hap" Arnold and "Tooey'1 Spaatz, the revolutionaries 1) fought the Army for recognition for air power's place in modern warfare, and 2) fought everybody for an independent U.S. Air Force which could make the most of its new capabilities. They got formal independence from Congress and President Truman in 1947. But the declaration of independence did not end the revolution. Tooey Spaatz, as the first Chief of Staff, U.S.A.F., and his successor, Hoyt Vandenberg, still had their hands full. One hand tried to fashion an atom-jet striking force to stop the threat of Communism; the other fought off the Army and Navy, which did not cotton to the Air Force's demands for money--much more money than the one-third of defense funds that it was getting.

The long fighting years of the Battle of Washington had given the Air Force a sensitive defense mechanism and an annoying passion for flamboyant publicity to drive its message home to the U.S. public, a proneness to leak its troubles to partisans in the press and in Congress when the infighting got tough. As Vanden-berg's Vice Chief of Staff, Nate Twining knew the infighting techniques as well as anybody. But when President Eisenhower promoted Twining to Chief of Staff last June, it was Twining's judgment that the long revolution was over, that the time had come to disband the rearguard and let the Air Force prove the inevitable logic of its position by performance.

Scream Stifled. Twining's decision soon got its first test. General Vandenberg retired after unsuccessfully defending the 137-wingAir Force program from Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson's early budget hacking. One of Twining's first big jobs was to join the new Joint Chiefs of Staff in a "New Look" at U.S. defense needs last September. He found that the best deal he could get out of the New Look was 127 wings. Air Forcemen drew breath for a great scream of outrage, but Twining passed the word: no complaints. The scream was stifled; Air Force sources let out not a whimper.

Then military logic began to work for Twining. In October 1953, the New Look went to the National Security Council. Treasury Secretary Humphrey said its price tag of $43 billion was too high. The new J.C.S. chairman. Admiral Arthur Radford, once an Air Force foe and target himself, put his finger on the reason: under the hazy foreign-policy directives inherited by the Eisenhower Administration, the J.C.S. simply had to prepare the Army, Navy and Air Force for big wars, little wars, and all kinds of wars to be cut and tailored to the enemy's initiative. And what, asked Radford, about the atomic bomb? Was the J.C.S. allowed to figure on using it? The White House had never really decided.

Out of the National Security Council session came one of the basic decisions of U.S. history (TIME, Dec. 21): the U.S. would respond to future Communist aggressions by attacking targets of its own choosing with weapons of its own choosing; it would use the atom according to military advantage; it would gradually reduce worldwide ground commitments and build up air power. The J.C.S., under direct orders from the White House, shortly translated this into a 1.000,000 man Army, a modernized naval carrier striking force including the three Forrestal class supercarriers--and Nate Twining's 137 wings.

Twining, by his restraint, his amiability, and his refusal to speak harshly of other services, played a delicate role in the big decision. Navy partisans in the Defense Department--mostly civilian--had planted in Charlie Wilson's mind the notion that the Air Force "flyboys" were wild, irresponsible and undeserving of confidence. Twining proved that this was not so. Then, at the first opportunity, he got Wilson and his Deputy Defense Secretary Roger Kyes beyond the Pentagon palace guard to show them the Air Force and to let logic take its course.

Functional Efficiency. The principal fact about the U.S. Air Force today is that it represents in the modern world what the Navy's great theorist, Admiral Mahan, called the "ability speedily to put forth the nation's power," i.e., it is the only service arm which can reach across the world to strike the enemy's own air bases and warmaking potential wherever they may be. But in order to make sense in this big way, the Air Force has to make sense in lesser ways. It does.

It has, for one thing, learned to live with fantastic rates of change. Nate Twining learned to fly at 70 m.p.h. in the World War I Jenny biplane; he is about to preside over the test of the supersonic Convair F-IO2--a spread which, in land-warfare terms, is equivalent to the difference between the spear and the tank. In this dimension of constant change, which groundlings can barely comprehend, the Air Force has managed to fashion its own kind of efficiency, and from this to build up its new procedures, disciplines, traditions and attitudes.

New Behavior. Today's experienced Air Force pilot no longer wears the so-mission crush in his cap. (To give it that World War II trademark, he removed the grommet and wore the cap under the shower.) He no longer sports the cowboy boots and the dangling lock of hair. He is about 32 years old. is likely to wear his greying hair in a close crew cut, has two children and a matured behavior to match. He is concerned far more often with finding a baby sitter than a blonde. His officers' clubs ring more frequently with the whoops of a Sunday-morning youngsters' birthday party than a Saturday night's carousing. He has learned that a fast-moving jet will not forgive a hangover.

This mature behavior is not entirely a result of age; it comes from the discovery that his job demands an efficient kind of life. The Air Force youngsters have discovered it, too. At Air Force training bases, cadets may drink beer in off-duty evening hours, but they drink remarkably little. Cadet hazing, similarly, is at a minimum, e.g., a lowerclassman is no longer ordered to stand in a brace against the wall until he traces his outline in sweat. Reason: jet flying is enough of a test.

Mike Fright. The Air Force has changed the concept of flight training almost as radically since World War II as the planes themselves have changed. Speed, altitude and the voracious fuel appetite of the jet power plant* have brought demands for new precision flying, navigating and fighting. The slam-bang days of bullying pilot instruction won't work. When an instructor climbs into the rear cockpit of a Lockheed T-33 jet trainer, he is the coach, and the youngster in the front seat (who has already graduated from propeller-driven trainers) is the player. Each straps on an oxygen mask with an open microphone inside. After that, the coach can read the cadet like an instrument. When the "hot mike" picks up quick and irregular breathing, the cadet is jittery; when the pitch of his voice climbs high, he is excited; when his neck reddens and his muscles tighten, he is tense.

Today's capable and cocky student is not batted down; the standards are raised on him. The unsure one is nursed along, encouraged by the patience of the system, which is slow to wash him out.

Only 4% are flunked out at Williams Air Force Base, Ariz, (the Air Force's first jet training school), and these only after a probing faculty board tries to discover what personal or family problems may have induced failure. Why so much patience? It costs $70,000 to train a jet pilot, and most of this money has been spent by the time the cadet has completed his nine months of basic training at Williams.

Target Fascination. Once a cadet can fly a jet, he learns to fight one. At this point, if he is any good, he turns into a "tiger." Tiger is at once a state of mind and the precious quality that Nate Twining tries hard to develop.-- A good pilot is a tiger; a better-than-good pilot is a hungry tiger. At Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., one of the finishing schools for fighter pilots, the walls are plastered with posters of tigers crouching for the kill. The cadets honor the training group commander, Colonel Clay Tice Jr., by calling themselves "Tice's Little Tigers." At some training bases, cadets burst out of their barracks for morning roll call with tiger roars. (But a Nellis officer says disdainfully: "We're quiet tigers here--really hungry ones.")

There is also a too-hungry tiger. A few students have flown their F-86s into the ground in an effort to get closer to ground targets--a phenomenon known as "target fascination."

Ice-Cold Ability. The first big decision made by the Air Force after World War II was to pour funds and priorities, even in the lean years, into the Strategic Air Command (SAC), the Air Force's-equivalent of the Navy's fleet-in-being. This was done at the expense of the Continental Air Defense Command and the Tactical Air Command. While Air Force-men flew their interceptors-and fighters on a shoestring (and the Army complained of lack of air support), the Air Force held stubbornly, sometimes noisily to-its conviction that real U.S. security lay in a ready striking force of medium and heavy bombers.

SAC's boss, a tough, brusque bomber man named Curtis Emerson LeMay (TIME, Sept. 4, 1950.), has proved to be one of the brilliant military organizers in history. LeMay did not go on the theory that he was preparing for a war some day; he went on the theory that he was in a war and only a ready force to hit Communist targets could keep the U.S. from losing it.

This is why SAC has evolved the kind of performance standards which set the pattern for the new Air Force. SAC's efficiency begins with little things, e.g., the security is airtight at SAC's 27 U.S. bases and 19 overseas bases because LeMay knows that the Russians must first try to cripple his A-bombers before any Communist offensive. SAC's safety record, best of all Air Force commands, is down to a low 18 accidents per 100,000 flying hours because LeMay knows that no accident-prone outfit will ever make it over all the hurdles between the U.S. and Moscow.

Mobile Base. LeMay has coaxed SAC's ten-engine Convair 6-363 (see color pages), its aging 6-503 (soon to be replaced), and the sleek, new Boeing 6-47 jet mediums beyond the limits of their expected capability. On the ground, SAC wings run a repair and maintenance systern which reports plane trouble by radio, charts the status of station repair work at 30-minute intervals. In the air, SAC's lumbering tankers, stationed across the free world, replenish combat planes on the wing and thus extend their range to the limit of the pilot's endurance -- not the aircraft's.

Every SAC wing has mobility; already packed and stored in hangars are sealed aluminum flyaway kits which slip into the planes' bomb bays, can be used as an emergency source of supply when the wing is ordered to operate out of an over seas base. Close behind the-combat planes comes a fleet of supporting Military Air Transport ships with the rest of the--wing's equipment and picked members of its ground crews -- mechanics, electronics specialists, armorers.

But LeMay has saved his closest at tention for his aircraft crews. Day after night after day, SAC crews are arcing across the globe, keeping up with SAC's heavy training requirements in all-weather flying, navigation, gunnery, radar deception and high-level (above 40,000 ft.) bombing on target. Once every three months, each crew flies a grueling practice mission which is equivalent in length to the distance from the U.S. to Russia and return, and puts the crew to a realistic test of its proficiency.

The best SAC crews are designated as "select" or "lead" crews. These crews are assigned specific targets in Russia or elsewhere, and must commit to memory all of the intricate details of getting on target and back to a friendly base. Members of select and lead crews usually get spot promotions to the next highest grade. But their skills are constantly being evaluated --in the squadron, in the wing, and every six months by a two-week special check by LeMay's personal examiners. If a select or lead crew falls behind in bombing, navigation or whatever, it loses its promotions.

Thick Soup. Last week a TIME correspondent watched a 6-47 squadron at Upper Heyford, England get ready for a routine day's work. (The squadron had recently flown from Limestone Air Force Base in Maine to England in 4 hr. and 37 min.) First, on the day before take-off from Upper Heyford, the three-man, crews went through a two-hour briefing session on what they were supposed to do. Then the "scopehead" (SAC slang for the bombardier-observer who runs the radar and is responsible for putting the A-bomb on target) of each crew withdrew to calculate-- his course and study the radar pictures of his plane's target so he would be able to recognize the target by radar fr--om 40,000 ft.

The crews were in bed by 8 p.m. They were up at 3 a.m. for a breakfast of two slices of French toast and two or three huge cups of coffee. (Each man paid for his own breakfast: 55^.) By 3:30 a.m., they were in the weather shack for a final briefing. Ceiling was at 1,700 ft. and closing down fast. By 4:30 a.m., they were at their planes (the ground crews had been there an hour and a half earlier). While a^ big, square dummy bomb, about the size of a piano crate, was loaded into the open bomb bay, the plane commander and his copilot, their flashlights poking into the darkness, started checking down a list of 320 different points to be sure the plane was working. Before dawn the job was finished. The five 6-475 shot off around 7:30 a.m., and were swallowed in, thick soup 500 ft. off the ground.

They climbed up through the weather at better than 300 knots; 26 minutes after takeoff, they leveled off on top at 35,000 ft. and went their separate ways. Nearly nine hours later, since home base was still socked in, four of them landed at an alternate field in North-Africa. The fifth aircraft had troubles. At 8:30 a.m., a pressure and oxygen check showed danger.

The pressure in the cabin was failing, and the pressure in the oxygen tanks had dropped from a normal 450 Ibs. to 250.

Without oxygen, the crew could not stay more than seconds at 35,000 ft.

The pilot radioed his control center and said he would have to descend. Control notified the R.A.F. and commercial control towers, which quickly got slow prop planes out of the way. Then the 6-47 headed downward to level out at 12,000 ft. But before it could make an instrument landing, the bomber had to lighten its fuel load. For an hour and a half it circled the field, using up fuel. There was no place nearby where it could dump its dummy bomb load. By 10:30, it was ready to attempt a landing.

Guided by Ground Controlled Approach (G.C.A.), the pilot headed in. In the observer's compartment, the scopehead had the landing strip firmly fixed on his radarscope, and could have directed the landing without help from G.C.A. if required. But the scopehead kept still, let G.C.A. do the talking. G.C.A. altered the bomber's course a degree as it let down to 1,500 ft. "Come on down, come on down," said G.C.A. in a relaxed voice. "You're right on now. Steady. It's raining, and the landing strips are wet and slippery. Easy.

Come on down." "Drag Chute Out!" The pilot, with his air tube wide open, letting a steady stream of frozen misty air blow on his face (the frozen air turned to snow and fell like soft hail inside the cabin), strained for a view of the field. The scopehead, his eyes glued to his radar, spoke for the first time at about 400 ft. above the ground. "You're just off a bit to the right," he said. Seconds later, the wheels chirped on the runway. The B-47 didn't bounce, just scraped, then the plane settled into a smooth landing. The air speed registered 100 knots, and the pilot could feel his wheels sliding on the slippery, wet pavement. "Drag chute out. Drag chute out," he called. Before he finished the order, the copilot had the brake-parachute billowing behind the plane to slow the speed.

The big 6-47, its wings drooping, rolled into its parking area, and the pilot cut its whining engines. When the crew climbed out, the base commander was on hand to greet them, but only to commiserate. An incomplete mission is a sad affair with the new Air Force. The pilot had executed the neatest feat of the day--a perfect instrument landing, but this meant only that the crew would have to go back up next day to complete the training it had missed.

Two Hours After. What is the net result of this new Air Force precision? In the event of Russian attack, U.S. strategic bombers can deliver an attack which would destroy major Soviet air bases and war installations within two hours after the first U.S. bomber crosses Russia's outer defenses. That single attack, with the present-day atomic bomb, would pack more explosive force than all other explosives fired in all wars to date. In the near future, armed with the thermonuclear bomb, one bomber will carry more destructive power than the sum total of all explosives in history.

There is much to be said for the prediction made by most airmen that war will never come as long as the Air Force packs this terrifying capability. Until some better method is found to preserve the peace, that puts the emphasis on maintaining the capability over a long period of time. And this, in turn, puts a new accent on the need for a stable Air Force.

Stability is one thing that Nate Twin-ing's Air Force--in common with the Navy and Army--does not have. "This whole thing could go to hell in two weeks." says Curt LeMay. Why? "People." It takes two years of a four-year enlistment to train a ground-crew chief, engine mechanic, radar technician or flight engineer.

It takes eight years before they really get good. Yet the Air Force's enlisted men are streaming out at the end of their four-year enlistments at the rate of 200,-ooo a year. It costs the U.S. $14,000 to train a skilled replacement. With officers (20% are Reserves), the picture is not much better.

Ultimate Dejection. Why do they leave? Some go for the simple reason that they can make more money on the outside. (A full colonel at Nellis A.F.B., near Las Vegas, makes less than most well-tipped Las Vegas waitresses.) But Air Force planners, like Personnel Chief Lieut.

General Emmett ("Rosie") O'Donnell, know that they can never hope to outbid industry on straight wages. They believe, as Army and Navy officers believe, that they can create stability by offering a way of life that combines the patriotic motive with the traditional privileges of the military. They wince as the Federal Government has clipped away such "fringe benefits" as housing, educational programs, recreation facilities, PXs, commissaries, adequate medical care for dependents. Even officers who never bought a bottle of whisky felt the ultimate in dejection last month when the Defense Department reversed its order allowing package liquor sales in officers' clubs--under pressure from retail liquor dealers.

The demands on a ready Air Force are so extreme (e.g., SAC air crews spend at least three months overseas each year) that its airmen have no time to fit into a local community. Communities, in return, are often hostile and impatient with the migrating airmen. (March A.F.B., near Riverside, Calif., paid its enlisted men in $2 bills one week, then politely pointed out its importance to the community's business when Riverside cash registers were soon filled with $2 bills.) To gain stability for the long pull, a ready military force must have the resources and privileges of its own community. There is something inefficient about a policy of which an Air Force pilot says--as one did last week to a TIME correspondent: "This kind of flying is worth almost any sacrifice, including the sacrifice of remaining in the service." The new Air Force is in Year I, and the U.S. has as much to learn about living with this new concept of power as the Air Force has to learn about itself.

The signs are hopeful on both scores. The Air Force, for example, is well aware that it is weak in fundamental doctrine and educated officers (4.2.1% of the Air Force officers are college graduates, and of these only 7% are service academy graduates).

It proposes to remedy both weaknesses by the establishment of the Air Force Academy, which is expected to get congressional approval this session.

On the other hand, without any old school tie, the Air Force has not yet developed any horse-cavalry generals or battleship admirals, and in the immediate future, is not likely to do so. It is in the new dimension of change that the Air Force is building toward the fantastically complicated era of the supersonic airplane, the hydrogen bomb and the guided missile. It is thus that it intends to hold up its end of Admiral Mahan's word--"watchfulness."

* The fuel bill for a nine-hour 6-47 mission is $11,OOO. --

Tiger was folded into Air Force slang by U.S. pilots in Korea; in Asia, the tiger is an age-old symbol of ferocity.

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