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Commanding the flight from the lead plane was 50-year-old Major General Archie J. Old Jr., who coordinated the trip, kept in constant radio contact direct with LeMay's headquarters in Omaha. Texas-born Archie Old, like Curt LeMay, is no West Pointer, was an auto dealer with a reserve commission in the Air Corps until he was called to active duty in September 1940. Squarejawed, blue-eyed, thoroughly able, he rose with phenomenal speed in wartime to command the Eighth Air Force's 96th Bomb Group at a ripe 36, led the first shuttle-bomb raid (from England to Russia and back), the famed Schweinfurt raids, flew 43 combat missions, became LeMay's director of operations in 1953, is now commander of SAC's Fifteenth Air Force.
The Tensions. "The airplanes ran like sewing machines," Archie Old said on landing. Few others present felt so offhand. Reporters crushed around as LeMay stitched through the line-up of glad SACs and pinned the Distinguished Flying Cross on each man. Families of some of the crewmen swarmed in to greet them. Newsmen herded one and all into a briefing room. Did Russia know of the mission? "Certainly, Russia knew about it," replied the general. Were the bombers armed? "This was an unarmed mission," i.e., no bombs aboard, but radar-controlled tail guns carried ammunition.
"Now," Archie Old said at last, "I've got to go. We went through four nights and three days in the air while you people were going through two nights and two days,-and I guess I aged a little faster than usual."
*By midyear, SAC will take delivery on its first Boeing KC-135 jet tankers, which, had they been in operation last week, would have cut about six hours off the round-the-world mission. *Since the flyers traveled at about half the speed of the earth (1,000 m.p.h. at the equator), the time span between sunrises was compressed to 16-hr. "sun days," half light, half dark. They caught their first sunset over the Great Lakes, a few hours after their i p.m. takeoff, thereafter saw the sun rise and set at eight-hour intervals, i.e., sunrise over the Atlantic, sunset over Saudi Arabia, sunrise over Malaya, sunset over Guam, sunrise in California. Total: three sunrises, three sunsets in a period just a few hours short of two full normal-sized days.