Operation Silk Hat

Nine F-10s Thunderchiefs swooped low, dropped 750-lb. bombs that disintegrated a target supply depot. A dozen F-100 Super Sabres scorched the earth with napalm. A Falcon rocket burst from an F106 Delta Dart, sent a drone aircraft to the ground in blazing bits. As a Tactical Air Command flight of F-105s sped overhead, a simulated nuclear bomb was exploded in a miniature fireball and nonradioactive mushroom cloud. As the waves of noise, heat and blast rolled across Florida's Eglin Air Force Base, Commander in Chief John Kennedy grinned from a rocking chair. The U.S. Air Force was putting on a show for the boss--and the boss seemed impressed.

The President watched eight 6-52 crews run to their planes and get into the air in 7 min. 34 sec. After Kennedy sounded a Klaxon, five Voodoo crews were airborne in 2 min. 24 sec. The President saw F-104s hit target rockets with Sidewinder missiles, laughed as an ancient C-47, all souped up with JATO rockets, shot into the sky like a jet. He inspected a line of 33 different aircraft, from the X-15 to the B-52, ducked inside a security hangar for a look at supersecret weapons.

No question about it, "Operation Silk Hat" was a good show. The Air Force had been working on it for five months. It had cost "several million" dollars. Wood and canvas buildings, erected as ground targets, cost some $5,000 alone. Nearly 4,000 men helped set the stage, polishing all the aircraft with NEVR-DULL wax, and shining trucks that the President never saw. For the press, 23 special telephone lines and eight Teletype machines were installed. For the President. 20 white telephones, each with a White House decal, were spaced conveniently along his route.

To all the services, such presidential shows are the most serious sort of business. "In an ordinary training operation." says an Air Force general, "the attitude is 'So what?' But in a presidential show, well, it's for keeps." Adds one of his Pentagon colleagues: "They're just as tough as combat operations, and sometimes men get hurt or killed." In preparing for the Eglin show, one did. Captain Charles G. Lamb Jr., 31, of Indianapolis, died when his F-10s disintegrated at 2.000 ft. as he practiced a supersonic bomb pullout with a force of 4.25 Gs.

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