Spaatz Up

From that exalted eyrie where top-ranking U.S. Air Force officers clasp the crag, a new eaglet stretched his wings and soared. Succeeding to the job which Lieut. General Delos Emmons left when he took over the Hawaiian Department, Major General Carl Spaatz became Chief of the Army Air Force Combat Command.

For his ability to fly hard & fast in World War I, the U.S. decorated "Tooey" Spaatz with a D.S.C.; for stamina in commanding the record-breaking endurance flight of the Question Mark in 1929, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Within the last year the Army has assigned him three big jobs.

Sandy-haired, hardworking, energetic, Carl Spaatz is one of the best-liked men in the Air Forces. He is also something of a legend. Trained at West Point, Spaatz entered aviation on the ground floor, flew in Mexico in 1916 with General Pershing's expedition. In 1917, assigned to build up an Aviation Instruction Center for Americans in Issoudun, France, he did such a bang-up job that the Army ordered him back to the U.S., to do the same thing at home. Tooey temporized, begged to see action first.

For 19 days he saw it. His score: three Fokkers and the D.S.C. Twenty-two years later, he still disliked being called home from a battlefront. This time (1940), acting as a U.S. Army observer in England, he wangled 90 instead of 19 extra days at the front.

Born 50 years ago into a Pennsylvania Dutch family as Carl Spatz (one a), the new Chief of the Army Air Force Combat Command has taken a good deal of kidding because of his name. About five years ago, tired of hearing strangers address him as General Spats, he added the extra a, indicating clearly that "Spots" was how he heard it. It still sounds, as it is, a German name, but Carl Spaatz believes in facing right up to that kind of thing. In 1940, while visiting an English airdrome near London, he signed his name and occupation in the visitors' book: "Brigadier General Carl Spaatz--Spy."

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