Command Swings

Fed up with red tape and interservice tensions in his joint command, four-star Air Force General Earle E. (for Everard) Partridge drew up plans months ago for reorganizing NORAD, the U.S.-Canadian North American Air Defense Command. His principal complaint: he did not have enough authority over assignment of NORAD's Army, Navy and Air Force officers and materiel (TIME, May 19, 1958). But nothing much ever happened about West Pointer Partridge's proposals. Fortnight ago, the Pentagon announced that able "Pat" Partridge, 58, was retiring from the Air Force, effective July 31, after 41 years of service.

To replace him at NORAD's headquarters in Colorado Springs, President Eisenhower last week tabbed four-star General Lawrence S. (for Sherman) Kuter, 53, Air Force commander in the Pacific. A brigadier general at 36--he was then the youngest general* in the nation's armed forces --slim, mustached West Pointer ('27) Larry Kuter saw duty in Britain, North Africa and the Pacific during World War II, was the first boss (1948-51) of the Military Air Transport Service.

Kuter's replacement at the Air Force's Pacific headquarters in Hawaii: Brooklyn-born Emmett ("Rosie") O'Donnell, 52, a West Pointer ('28) who earned the Distinguished Flying Cross soon after Pearl Harbor for his solo B-17 attack against Japanese warships off the Philippine coast, led the first B-29 raid on Tokyo. Now the Air Force's hard-driving deputy chief of staff for personnel, Lieut. General O'Donnell can look forward to wearing a fourth star in his new post.

*Two years after Kuter got his star, the Ninth Air Force's Richard C. Sanders made brigadier general at 28, becoming the youngest U.S. general since the boyish brigadiers of Civil War and Indian war days. Sanders is now retired, lives in Washington.

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