Big Man, Big Moment

Don, do you see . . .

This is Don. Yes, I see . . . Bruce, put

your two planes on the cruiser . . .

Let's go on the carrier . . .

It was 1550 hours on Aug. 24, 1942, in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Commander Harry Donald Felt, 40, leader of a bomb and torpedo air group from the carrier Saratoga, was snapping out his orders as he eyed the Japanese light carrier Ryujo with cruiser and destroyer escort from 14,000 ft. Just after Ryujo turned into the wind to launch fighters, Don Felt, Topeka-born, Annapolis '23, pushed over his first wave of bombers. Then he went down with the second wave in a screaming dive through flak and fighters to score one out of his group's four to ten 1,000-lb.-bomb hits on the carrier. And while Don Felt's bombers kept the Japanese busy, Lieut. Bruce Harwood roared in with his torpedo planes from both sides and scored a crippling hit. Loss to the Japanese: Ryujo. Reward for Don Felt: the hallowed Navy Cross for "extraordinary heroism and distinguished service."

One day last week, 16 years after the Solomons, Don Felt got another big moment in the Pacific. In the years between, he had won the Legion of Merit commanding the light carrier Chenango off Okinawa (1945), worked up through the postwar Pentagon and carrier commands to boss the Mediterranean Sixth Fleet (1956), pinned on his fourth star as Admiral Arleigh Burke's Vice Chief of Naval Operations (1956-58). Last week he was named Commander in Chief, Pacific, with 500,000 men, 400 ships, 2,500 planes, to do the job of deploying U.S. power and backstopping U.S. diplomacy from Alaska to the Indian Ocean. And Flyer Don Felt's legacy, left him by retiring four-star Admiral five-year CINCPAC Felix Budwell Stump, 63, veteran of Leyte Gulf (1944), Indo-China (1954), Quemoy-Matsu (1954-55), and Indonesia (1958), was again the legacy of a big moment. "If the U.S. fails to take a strong position," said Admiral Stump, "all Asia will surely regard us as a subbreed of paper tiger with no guts, claws or teeth."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.