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The day was crisp and sunny, but a cold wind whipped through the marble columns of the white Arlington amphitheater, riffling the rows of flags. At 11 o'clock a can non thudded out the first salvo of the slow, rolling 19-gun salute and a flag-draped caisson moved slowly up from the Arlington gate, bearing the first U.S. Secretary of Defense to a sailor's grave.
From the flower-banked stage a minister intoned the words of the Episcopal burial service: "I am the resurrection and the life . . . Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" An honor guard of Marine riflemen fired three sharp volleys over the plain white wooden marker: "James V. Forrestal, Lieut. U.S.N." and a Marine bugler sounded taps. In the crowd of departing mourners, hat in hand, went the man who had begun to carry on from the point where the doughty, dedicated spirit of James Forrestal had finally given up.
The Change. It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast between two men. When big, bald Louis Johnson two months ago stepped into James Forrestal's place, control of the nation's second biggest office passed from a wiry, introverted, unpolitical public servant to a 202 lb., hearty, hail-fellow man of action who had been a politician for most of his adult life. By last week the change of command and the change in methods that went with it had sent uneasy rumors and angry charges up & down the 163 miles of corridors in the Pentagon, where Jim Forrestal had finally managed to get Army, Navy and Air Force together under one roof. Some of the Pentagon uneasiness and anger over integration had long since spread to the 1,650,000 men in the nation's vast military establishment. With the coming of Louis Johnson, old Army man and longtime friend of the Air Force, the unseemly feuding broke more openly into public view. There was no doubt of it; the shield of the republic was beginning to show some alarming cracks (see above).
James Forrestal, perhaps too sensitive to the traditions and loyalties of the three armed services, had tried to win unity by conciliation and persuasion. In this he had largely failed. Louis Johnson had moved in like a combine advancing on a field of summer wheat. He set out "to crack a few heads together," and he did so by bold and brusque decisions. In his fourth week in office he ordered the Navy to scrap its biggest dreamboat, the $188 million supercarrier, United States, and ended naval aviation's dream of striking at the heart of any enemy with the atomic bomb. The strategic bombing role would go to Secretary Stuart Symington's Air Force.