Some Changes Made

For the 2,000,000 men in the Army Air Forces, now larger than the U.S. Navy, training expansion is nearly over, fighting expansion dead ahead. Last week A.A.F. General H. H. ("Hap") Arnold underlined this fact by recasting part of his command.

> Major General William E. Kepner took over the Eighth Air Force (England) Fighter Command. His predecessor, Brigadier General Frank O'D. ("Monk") Hunter, was boosted to deputy commander of the Eighth. Short, broad-chested, Bill Kepner won a Distinguished Service Cross for capturing a German machine gun singlehanded in World War I. In the 1920s he was one of the Army's top airship pilots. Nine years ago he and Captain Albert W. Stevens took an Army-National Geographic Society balloon to 60,613 ft. over South Dakota before the bag ripped and they had to leave their airtight gondola (roared Bill Kepner into his radio mike: "This damned thing has gone nuts!") Not until the gondola had plummeted to 500 ft. did he jump. It was his last big experience with ballooning. Already an airplane pilot, he became one of the Army's best fighter commanders.

> Major General Davenport Johnson, a heavy-bomber man, became commander of the Eleventh Air Force (Alaska).

> Major General St. Clair Streett was relieved of command of the Third Air Force (Southeast U.S.) and sent to an overseas assignment. The first man in the Army to wear brass buttons on his O.D. uniform,* wiry Jimmy Streett has recently been concentrating on the training of big-bomber crews.

> Major General Ralph Royce left his First Air Force (headquarters Mitchel Field, L.I.) for foreign duty. Airmen guessed he was headed for Cairo to take over the Ninth, relieving Major General Lewis H. Brereton. Whatever his detail, airmen approved the choice.

In the Southwest Pacific Theater, where he was Chief of Staff for Air after Pearl Harbor, Ralph Royce's showing had been only soso. Army airmen charged pedestrian performance more to a generally inept air command than to personal failure.

Biggest change now ahead is the expected reorganization of the Eighth Air Force into tactical and strategic air forces, like the North African air command. Likeliest candidate to head the former is Annapolis-Man Lewis Brereton, who would absorb the Eighth's Air Support Command.

Where this will leave Major General Ira C. Eaker, commander of the Eighth, the War Department has not yet announced. One guess was that he would become commander of the Strategic Air Force (heavy bombers). Another was that Ira Eaker would remain U.S. air chief in Britain and thus be assured of another star for his shoulder straps.

* In 1923 the fashion-conscious Air Corps field-tested brass buttons by assigning a set to him to wear. They looked better than bronze, were soon regulation.

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