As maintenance officer, I was convinced this had to change, so I set about trying to convince base personnel that hot refueling was a sound practice. I was rebuffed initially. It was as if I was trying to deviate radically from time-honored naval regulations. A succession of meetings with the fire marshal and safety staff followed, but we finally got hot refueling approved, a change that measurably increased the efficiency of our operations.
My Cecil Field experience was very positive except for one unforgettable day of national significance that, like many Americans, became fixed in my mind forever. It was a Friday in November, a week before Thanksgiving in 1963. I had returned from a flight and entered the ready room. Instead of the lively repartee characteristic of this normally vigorous space, a glum and dejected collection of officers sat sullenly or moved slowly and without energy.
One of the officers said to me in a soft monotone, “The president’s been assassinated.”
I was stunned, of course, and remember going home and watching television all that weekend and often thereafter, seeing Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, trying to grasp the significance of the tragedy, and seeing Pres. John F. Kennedy laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.
I participated in the flyover at Arlington National Cemetery when President Kennedy was buried, and it was a challenge. It was to be a combined U.S. Air Force and Navy event. Coordination was a nightmare, because we were to fly in a formation of “Vs,” three aircraft per division, with an Air Force lieutenant colonel leading. We rendezvoused over Langley Air Force Base, north of Oceana, somehow got aligned with the other twenty-four airplanes, and circled east of the nation’s capital until called in. We streamed over the gravesite at the designated minute, but it was a struggle.
I loved the Phantom. It was a mighty machine with plenty of power—a pair of J79s, each producing twenty-eight thousand pounds of thrust, and maneuverability. It served dual roles as a fighter for air-to-air engagements as well as a bomber for attack missions. Those were good days at Cecil. The family liked it there, the folks of Jacksonville appreciated the military, and the weather, though blisteringly hot in the summer, was fine most of the year. The kids went to the air station swimming pool every day in the warm seasons, and the flying was wonderful.
The squadron successfully completed carrier landing qualifications aboard the USS Forrestal, commanded by Capt. Mike Hanley, and in January 1964, we were slated to go to the Caribbean for more training aboard the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, commanded by Captain (later Vice Adm.) Jerry Miller. We were slated for a Mediterranean deployment.
I had been maintenance officer for more than a year and was to become the operations officer, replacing Lt. Cdr. Dick Thompson, who was leaving the squadron. But a phone call from the personnel detailer in Washington changed all that.
“How would you like to be the executive assistant to a four-star general?” I was asked.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I was in a flying squadron, doing what I loved, was supposed to stay in the outfit for at least another six months, and now an outside force was getting in the way of that.
Without hesitation I replied, “I would not like to be the executive assistant to a four-star general. Moreover, you know from looking at my record I’ve already had a tour as admiral’s aide with Admiral Moorer.” I added that I was about to become the squadron’s operations officer, we were going to sea, and I was really needed here. I had been told earlier that after the squadron’s deployment, I would be ordered to attend the Naval War College in July, a sound step in terms of career progression. Moreover, the executive assistant’s job would cut short my squadron tour and deprive me of six months of flying duty.
I was given some time to think this over and consulted Capt. (later Adm. Mickey Weisner, the CO on my first squadron, who was the senior aviation detailer in “BuPers.”
“Skipper, I think this is unfair,” I said. “I’ve already had an aide’s tour.”
Weisner replied, “I’ll look into it and get back to you.”
Next day he called me and explained, “You’ve been personally picked by Vice Adm. [William] Smedberg.” Smedberg was the chief of naval personnel. He knew me slightly from my Annapolis days, but his son, Bill, was my classmate, and we were friends.
Weisner amplified, “It’s a very sensitive situation, Bill. General [Paul DeWitt] Adams, a four star, is commander in chief of the U.S. Strike Command and has just been given full unified command status with purview over the Middle East, Africa [South of the Sahara], and South Asia [Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq]. The Navy is concerned about carriers and other assets deploying in this area under his operational control.”
The Navy was also upset that an Army general gained control of the Middle East, a responsibility heretofore handled by a Navy flag officer based in London.
The Navy, including Adm. George Anderson, CNO at the time, had misgivings about this authority, and as a result, tensions existed between the upper echelons of the two services. Some in the Navy were adamantly opposed to the unified command status, an initiative pushed by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and authorized by President Kennedy.
Gen. Paul Dewitt Adams, a West Point graduate (1928) and the four-star to whom I would be assigned, was known as a gruff, demanding officer, very tough on people and a man who viewed time as a precious commodity that should never be wasted. More important, he was not on friendly terms with his Navy counterparts, Adm. Don Felt, commander in chief, Pacific, and Adm. Page Smith, commander in chief, Atlantic. Both were old-school naval officers, just as General Adams was an old-school Army officer, with an esteemed combat record in World War II. Indeed, he even resembled German general Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox,” was impeccable in his appearance, freshly creased from top to bottom, and always carried a swagger stick, the army mark of authority.
Understandably, Felt and Smith abhorred the notion of an Army general ordering our warships around, particularly the aircraft carriers. The situation was so strained that Felt and Smith wouldn’t even speak to Adams, which meant there was virtually no interface among Navy unified commanders and the Strike Command. This was an acutely unhealthy situation for our national defense. General Adams knew this, of course, and sent letters to both Smith and Felt suggesting an exchange of liaison officers, a standard practice at that level of command. Neither of these letters was answered, to the detriment of our country. Yet the liaison did take place, and I was part of it.
I remained baffled by my selection for the job. A lieutenant commander simply does not pull much weight in dealing with flag-rank personnel. I was a mouse among the elephants. In retrospect, I believe it was because of my previous affiliations with the likes of Admirals Moorer and Anderson. Adm. David McDonald succeeded Admiral Moorer as commander Carrier Division Six, and I got to know him during the turnover—and, to some extent, Smedberg. My plan was simple. I would do the best I could, and if I failed, I figured the worst thing they could do was to send me back to a fighter squadron.
It turned out that a lowly lieutenant commander can influence a situation, if only in a subtle manner. Whenever I perceived an area where communications with the Navy could be improved, I jumped on it. I sought opportunities for General Adams to visit naval shore commands (he had already been on a number of Navy ships) and to meet senior naval officers at social events as well as official occasions. If I could inject into his speeches favorable comments toward the Navy, I did so.
The purpose of Strike Command was to develop a Rapid Reaction Force that blended elements of the three services into a flexible and lethal, joint, quick-strike unit. It had to be capable of moving to a trouble spot in a hurry and taking whatever actions were necessary to resolve a crisis.
Very aware of the ongoing tensions, and to demonstrate good faith, General Adams was pleased that a flag officer was assigned as his chief of staff. That duty fell to Rear Adm. Forsythe Massey, a naval aviator. Admiral Smedberg also felt I could contribute to smoothing the troubled w
aters between Adams and his counterparts. I wondered how in heck a lieutenant commander, yours truly, could be counted on to assuage hard feelings at a level of authority far beyond mine. But I would give it my best shot.
Admiral Massey and I were dispatched to Strike Command Headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, reporting in January 1964. We were warmly received, although I felt I was entering a cauldron of controversy that could easily have a detrimental effect on my career if I wasn’t careful. I hated leaving my fighter squadron, and I’d have to move the family again, but there are far worse places than Tampa. I had no choice but to make the best of it.
I took over the job cold. A timely turnover with my predecessor, Richard Harris, was impossible, because he, an Army major and, ironically, a 1951 West Point graduate who finished second in his class, didn’t get along with Adams and had been transferred to the (J-3) division on General Adams’s staff. The major was considered an up and coming superstar who had been handpicked for the job. The pressure got to him, however, and he was unable to bear up under it (although it didn’t prevent him from recovering and become a two-star general later in his career). He was hospitalized temporarily, and it was during this interlude that I was shoved into the breach. You simply could not relax around the general, and that went for seniors as well as juniors.
General Adams was just getting the Strike Command under control when I arrived. The Air Force and the Army had made progress in developing rapid reaction tactics and were responding well to General Adams’s direction, although the Air Force folks felt they really worked for the commander in chief of the Tactical Air Command, while the Army people believed their true boss was the commander of the Continental Army Command. Both were four-stars and West Point graduates. At least they were talking to Adams and operationally came under Adams’s purview. Sound complicated? It was. There were plenty of ingredients for turmoil.
I was determined to avoid the politics of the situation, if that were possible. What followed was an abundance of long, hard working days and nights. Indeed, for the first year of my tour, we worked seven days a week, and seldom less than ten or twelve hours a day, including Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. There was much to do, moving the Rapid Reaction Force beyond the initial setup phase. We were plowing new ground with respect to this “unified command” philosophy. Not only did we have to prepare contingency plans, but we also had to manage the military assistance programs that would inevitably follow a conflict. The administrative detail was mind-boggling. There was an incessant flow of paperwork, trying to get each of the multitudes of participants on the same page. The number of plans we prepared was sizeable.
We were also responsible for the Joint Test and Evaluation Task Force, which focused on developing helicopter mobility tactics, an effort that led to the creation of the first air cavalry division being formed by the Army. Secretary of Defense McNamara actually conceived the idea of Strike Command. In short, we had a tremendous amount on our plate.
In the summer of 1964, traveling via a noisy but reliable four-engine U.S. Air Force C-118, Henry “Hank” Ramsey, a State Department official assigned to Strike Command; Army lieutenant colonel Joe Miller; yours truly; General Adams; and other staff members departed MacDill for a lengthy trip to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. We made an en route stop in Paris, where the general met with top officials from U.S. and European commands. Admiral McDonald, now chief of naval operations, having relieved Admiral Anderson because of a scuffle Anderson had with Secretary McNamara during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was there. We were able to arrange a brief window of time for an unplanned visit with him. McDonald was a fellow southerner, from Georgia, and they hit it off well, which was a plus in the quest to ease the strain between the Navy and Strike Command.
We also made a side trip to Monte LaMar in southern France. When the general commanded the 136th regiment of the 36th division during the war, his command post was in a chateau owned by a family friendly to the Allies. The family was still there, and the general presented a plaque to them in commemoration of his stay. A very nice touch.
There was another window of time that would allow for a side trip to Naples. “It might be a good idea,” I suggested to the general, to meet with the commander in chief southern area, Adm. James Russell (USNA 1926). Russell, I knew, was a gracious and popular officer, and although there was no direct link in the chain of command between the two, it wouldn’t hurt for the pair to get to know each other. In fact, there was an indirect link between the commands in that Russell would provide contingency support to Strike Command as necessary.
Admiral Russell took the general on his boat for a ride to Capri, which was relaxing and conducive to forming a comfortable relationship between the two senior officers. It was another approach to mending fences.
Subsequently, we traveled to the Paris of the Middle East, Beirut, then a lovely coastal city, brimming with fine hotels, tourists, and attractions of historical interest. The general had been deeply involved in the Lebanon crisis of 1958, so he was quite familiar with its surroundings.
After Lebanon came Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia (where the general met Haile Selassie, then monarch of that country), Nigeria, Senegal, Liberia, and Nigeria. And from there we went to the Republic of the Congo, which had recently won its independence from Belgium. In Leopoldville, the capital city, the general met with U.S. Amb. George McMurtrie “Mac” Godley and, later, Pres. Sese Seko Mobutu, the opportunistic Congolese army sergeant who made his brutal way to the top post in the country. While the general dined with the former sergeant, I was hosted at a dinner in the city and consumed some beef that didn’t taste quite right. I was ill, off and on, the rest of the journey. I wasn’t alone in this discomfort. We drank distilled water, which helped, but most of us in the party experienced various degrees of dysentery throughout the portions of the trip. On arrival at McDill, my temperature soared. I was injected with a significant volume of penicillin, and after a couple of days, I returned to the job.
In retrospect, this journey was as educational to me as a course at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Every day we received a voluminous number of messages from the intelligence network describing critical events all over the world. We were tracking not only the conflict in the Congo but also the growing controversy involving India and Pakistan, Rhodesia’s declaration of independence, and so on. Hank Ramsey, incidentally, was in his element during the trip and produced a number of beneficial briefings from his State Department perspective that were most helpful.
In the second year, we scaled back to six days a week, taking Sundays off. We made progress, slowly but surely. And in the spring of 1965, we exercised the Rapid Reaction Force when a crisis occurred in the Dominican Republic. There was a rebellion against the government, and it was our task to support the incumbent leaders. Interestingly, in the midst of the encounter, Adm. Tom Moorer relieved Admiral Smith. One of the first calls Moorer received was from General Adams, something Adams would never have done with Smith or Felt.
“I want to assure you,” Moorer told Adams, “that I will work with you and that we’ve got everything under control.” Moorer asked for more helicopter support and Adams OK’d same on the spot. The two officers struck up an excellent working relationship, one that went a long way toward resolving the crisis in our favor. It didn’t hurt that both Adams and Moorer hailed from Alabama.
When the crisis subsided, General Adams traveled to Norfolk to make a call on Moorer, who returned the visit to our headquarters shortly thereafter. The difference in the atmosphere that prevailed once Moorer was in the saddle was as amazing as it was welcome.
In retrospect I was very disappointed in Admirals Smith and Felt. The Rapid Reaction Joint Task Force concept was sanctioned by the highest authority, the president of the United States. It was to be implemented, not tried out as an experiment. It is still used today.
Adams was a stickler for proper correspondence and paperwork. He had a tendency to mumble
when dictating a letter, but his secretary, Betty, had a magical ability to interpret those muffled sounds. I would help her finalize her notes, and because I did have some facility with words, I inserted my own phraseology here and there to make the document read as smoothly as possible. Incredibly, once we got into a groove, we seldom, if ever, had a letter or document returned to us for rewrite. The general was so busy he often signed the letters without reading them. That was a good sign. Yet Adams hated to relax, much less take leave.
Despite this, I couldn’t help but respect the man. In early 1942 he was a lieutenant colonel assigned as executive officer in a commando unit—the first special forces unit—a joint venture with Canadian troops. They formed up and trained in Helena, Montana, conducted cold weather and mountain training, and were initially dispatched to the Aleutian campaign in Alaska. After that they were ordered to Italy and fought their way up the boot from Salerno, much of the time behind enemy lines. The general used to jokingly boast, “I’ve spent more time forward of our own artillery than any other officer in the Army.”
His rise to prominence was somewhat meteoric. He became regimental commander of the 36th Division, was promoted to brigadier general by the end of the war, and in the process, earned a reputation as a hard-nosed, if impersonal, warrior with a minimum of close friends but a special knack at getting the job done.
He had a temper and would dress down anyone who erred. I once saw him brace a three-star general against the bulkhead, forcing the poor man to stand at attention like a plebe at West Point. He was not a “hail fellow well met” and did not belong to any “old boys club” of Army officers. In this sense he was a loner and not well liked. But he had been handpicked by Secretary of Defense McNamara for the Strike Command job. General Adams’s leadership philosophy boiled down to one theme: subordinates had to prove themselves before earning respect rather than the more common practice of assuming personnel were competent until proven otherwise.
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