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For Men & Planes. The new 15-minute alert, in force at all SAC bases, is based on Air Force estimates that 15 minutes is all the warning the U.S.—or bases overseas—would be likely to get before a missile strike. It requires a proficiency and efficiency that airmen would have thought fantastic only two years ago. Yet next year, through an ingenious system of shifting and resting planes and crews, SAC intends to have two-thirds of its planes on a constant 15-minute alert. Meanwhile, the vanguard of General O. P. ("Opie") Weyland's Tactical Air Command lighter B66 twin-jet bombers, 6-458 and F-100D supersonic fighter-bombers meets a five-minute deadline.
The ability to get his planes into the air fast is one of Tommy White's methods of exploiting the potentialities of the Air Force to the fullest to meet the new day's threats. There are other ways to make the most of airpower, and the U.S. is aware of all of them. A year ago, when the Russians threatened to send volunteers to exploit the Suez crisis, the U.S. sent Moscow a private hands-off warning —and sufficient SAC bombers took the air to make the warning effective. The Russians quit talking about volunteers. SAC's bombers can be moved to forward bases to make political points (and to be read on enemy radar) just as the Navy's fleets can steam ostentatiously to show the flag. As an instrument of keeping the peace in the cold war, bombers still have advantages—unlike launched missiles, they can be recalled, can be ordered to shift targets in flight. And currently, the Air Force's bombers pack a bigger explosive wallop than programed intercontinental missiles.
Herpetology & St. John's. The man who bosses today's jet and missile Air Force was born in Walker, Minn, in 1901—just two years before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. His maternal great-grandfather was Charles Dresser, the Episcopal minister who performed the marriage of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd. His father, John Chanler White, an Episcopal minister of Springfield, Ill. and later a bishop, encouraged Tommy to go to church once weekly, to join the Boy Scouts. Tommy's earliest interest was catching snakes at his family's summer cottage at Lake Paw Paw, Mich, and taking them home in a peach basket. ("We always wondered what happened to that snake that got away in the Pullman," says his sister.) His second interest was foreign nations. His third interest was organizing the neighborhood kids for military drill, in which he was always the commanding officer.
At 13, Tommy White moved on to St. John's Military Academy (Episcopal) in Delafield, Wis., made several athletic teams and the presidency of the graduating class, was editor-in-chief of the 1918 St. John's yearbook. The Trumpeter. Barely 17. he was one of the youngest cadets ever admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. At the age of 18, graduating 148th out of 270 in one of World War I's speedup classes, he was one of the youngest cadets ever commissioned.