Changing the Guard

In 1951, Air Force General Benjamin Wiley Chidlaw, test pilot and engineer who directed development of the first U.S. jets, got another pioneer assignment: create the machines and the organization to defend the U.S. against air attack. Four years later, the nation has a Continental Air Defense Command that is on 24-hour duty from the arctic to New Mexico (TIME, Dec. 20). But it no longer has the benefit of its founder's experience. Last week, at the age of 54, General Chidlaw retired with 75% pay.

Chidlaw's successor: General Earle Everard Partridge, also 54, commander of the Far East Air Forces. An enlisted infantry soldier in World War I (St. Mihiel, the Argonne, Verdun), "Pat" Partridge re-enlisted after the Armistice, won an appointment from the ranks to West Point, joined the embryonic Army Air Service after graduation in 1924. A test pilot and flight instructor in the years that followed, Partridge never lost his love for flying as he rose to top command, e.g., Eighth Air Force in Europe, Fifth Air Force in Korea.

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