Bumper Bounced

The Air Force last week closed its books on the case of the Bumping Colonel and the Angry General. The colonel: Lieut. Colonel Charles Platt Jr., who bulldozed his way onto a Military Air Transport Service plane in Japan last month, unseating half a dozen Stateside-bound G.I.s. The general: Lieut. General Robert Whitney Burns, boss of U.S. military forces in Japan, who ordered the plane to return to its base and personally drove over to Tokyo's Tachikawa Airport to put the G.I.s back in their seats and to chew out Colonel Platt (TIME, April 13). As punishment for having commandeered six precious seats for himself, his wife and four children--all bound for a Hawaiian holiday--Platt was bounced out of his job as commander of the MATS terminal at Tachikawa and fined $340. Coincidence: the fine covered (with $7 to spare) the cost of 1,650 gallons of gasoline that the plane jettisoned before it landed back at Tokyo.

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