In the Navy, an officer fit for top command must be 1) well weathered, 2) a graduate of Annapolis. A composite picture of the flag officers who run the Navy —from statistics on officer personnel released this week—would be a man who was graduated from the Naval Academy around the beginning of the century, sailed in 1907 on the U.S. Fleet's chesty globe-girdling cruise, commanded a warship in World War I, is now a frosty-haired veteran of 57. More than likely, he is not an aviator.
His opposite number, a general officer in the Army, cannot be so easily typed.
Average age of Army generals is 51. Only 45% of them are West Pointers.
Neither in Army nor Navy is this the result of war. Many of the non-West Pointers now wearing Army stars are regulars who came up from the ranks or through appointments from civilian life (as the Marines get most of their officers).
In the Navy such officers have so far won no top commands afloat, only a few ashore.
The Line. The Navy now has 202 flag officers of the line: admirals, vice admirals, rear admirals, commodores.
Top, higher than an "angel's footstool," is frigid, closemouthed COMINCH Ernest J. King, who was eligible for retirement last year but was retained in his post by the President. Last week he celebrated his 65th birthday. The only other men in the Navy who wear an admiral's four stars on active line duty: > White-haired, canny Chester W. Nimitz, 58, boss in the Pacific; shaggy, bull-tongued William Frederick Halsey Jr., 61, commander of the South Pacific and the only one of the full admirals besides King himself who is a naval aviator; ruddy, meticulous Harold R. Stark, 63, commander of U.S. Naval forces in European waters; spare, taciturn Royal E.
Ingersoll, 60, Nimitz' opposite number in the Atlantic.
>Oldest admiral is bearded, erect Joseph Mason ("Bull") Reeves, long since retired but now back at work as chairman of the Navy's Munitions Assignment Committee. Age: 71.
> Of vice admirals (rank equals lieutenant general) the Navy has 21, including one "EDO" (Engineering Duty Only), five aviators, one aviation observer. Their average age: 58.
>Of rear admirals (major generals) the Navy has 153, not counting the rear admirals in staff corps (supply, medical, dental and engineering) who are not flag officers because they fly no flags, may tread no quarter-decks. Twenty-five of the rear admirals of the line are EDOs, 33 are aviators, two are aviation observers. Their average age: 57.