Up Youth

An old joke that used to circulate around British pubs was that "American Air Force colonels under 21 must be accompanied by their parents." The joke is based on the Air Forces' policy of giving able young flying officers plenty of chances to rise. Last week the Army's air arm outdid itself by elevating (with President Roosevelt's approval) two colonels, still in their late twenties, to the rank of brigadier general.

General Sanders. At 28, Richard C. Sanders is the youngest general officer in the U.S. Army and probably the youngest since Custer, who got his star at 24. World War I was already well under way when Sanders was born (in Salt Lake City), and less than two months before Pearl Harbor he was still a second lieutenant. These facts are all the more remarkable because he is not a West Pointer. But in the University of Utah's R.O.T.C. he was an "A" student in military science and tactics. The only civilian job he ever had was running an elevator to finance his college social activities. After graduating from the Army's flying school at Kelly Field, big (6 ft. 3 in., 200 lb.) blue-eyed Richard Sanders was first among 125 candidates at Mitchel Field, fourth in the whole U.S., in competitive examinations for Regular Army commissions. He was a Liberator pilot in 1942, helping chew up Rommel's supply lines in North Africa. In the U.S. Ninth Air Force Dick Sanders rose to be bomber-command chief of staff, later a group commander. He won the D.F.C. for "extraordinary achievement ... in the Middle East theater," added a Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster for leading a raid on Naples. Now the Ninth is in England--chewing up Rommel again-- and General Sanders is its bomber-command administrative officer.

General Vincent. Almost but not quite so big (6 ft., 175 lb.), Clinton Dermott ("Casey") Vincent, the Air Forces' second boy general, is a fighter pilot and the prototype of "Vince Casey" in Milton Caniff's famed action comic, Terry and the Pirates, but has not appeared in the strip since its scene shifted to Burma. Caniff got acquainted with Vincent through a fan letter written by Vincent's wife to the cartoonist. "I picked his brains," says Caniff.

Born 29 years ago in Gale, Texas, Vincent was graduated from West Point in 1936. After Pearl Harbor he went to China to fight under Chennault, became his operations officer and deputy chief of staff. He is credited with six Jap kills. When he got his D.F.C. last year, he had taken off on more than 50 missions totaling 144 hours of combat flying. He now commands one of General Chennault's most important "composite" (Chinese and U.S.) units.

How & Why. Leadership, fighting spirit, reliability and administrative talent may help to promote a young officer in the Air Forces--as elsewhere in the Army-- but in the A.A.F. there is still another factor. In the rapid Air Forces expansion following Pearl Harbor, young men were pushed into important jobs because they could do them. The policy of "Hap" Arnold (57), who respects youth more than most oldsters, was to bestow rank commensurate with the job, and to hell with seniority.

Result of the policy: the Air Forces average of general officers' ages is much lower than in the ground Army, even farther below the seniority-bound list of Navy flag officers.

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