Naval airmen won a hollow triumph last week. A new, high-sounding job was created: Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air. Its occupant: Vice Admiral (upped from Rear Admiral) John Sidney McCain, 58, for ten months Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, for seven years a naval aviator, for all his career a "battleship admiral" at heart.
The new job carries responsibility for plans, policy, personnel and logistics of naval aviation. It means official, though belated and only partial, acknowledgment of the airplane's role in sea warfare. It still leaves the air arm's influence in the Navy far less than that...
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