Death of the Young Colonel

To the U.S. last week came news of the end of one of the most spectacular careers in the Army's history. Donald M. Keiser had died Dec. 11, "of natural causes," somewhere in Africa, where he was chief of staff of the Bomber Command in Major General Lewis H. Brereton's Middle East Air Force.

Five years ago Michigan-born Don Keiser was a private in the Air Corps. When he died at 28 he was probably the youngest man in the U.S. Army to wear a colonel's eagles. He went from the ranks to become a flying cadet, got his commission and his pilot's wings in 1939. He received the D.F.C. for flying a Fortress with the famed 19th Bombardment Group to the Philippines in September 1941, added an Oak Leaf Cluster for bombing a Jap battleship Jan. 9, 1942. Six weeks later in Java he earned a Silver Star by saving a fellow officer in the face of enemy fire, later got an Oak Leaf Cluster to add to that medal. News of Colonel Reiser's death has probably not reached his wife Margaret, who is still interned in Manila. With the death of Don Keiser, Army men believed the title of youngest colonel passed to Richard H. Carmichael, 29, commander of the 19th Group (TIME, Dec. 7), promoted last month following his return to the U.S.

35 Days on Guadal

Casually the U.S. Navy announced last week that, in five weeks of operations based on Guadalcanal, a single Navy dive-bomber squadron had attacked 04 ships, had sunk or damaged 18. By this record the squadron, under Lieut. Commander Louis J. ("Bullet Lou") Kirn, became easily the most experienced dive-bombing squadron in the Navy. The squadron's story:

For those men there was no difference, except for darkness and light, between day and night. Take, for example, Oct. 5.

At 3 a.m. eleven of Kirn's SBDs took off in unusually bad weather for a dawn attack on the Jap seaplane base at Rekata Bay. Weymouth and Mildahn, with four other pilots, reached their target and gave the Japs a nasty surprise. From Henderson Field at dawn, four more SBDs took off on search flights, Weary leading one section, Purdum the other. They sighted five destroyers just out of range for dive-bombing attack. Other pilots took off for antisub patrol off Tulagi, to smoke out Jap land positions on northwest Guadal, to search for some lost pilots.

After the usual Japanese raid at midday (known as Tojo Time) six more SBDs set out to look for the Tokyo Express (enemy warships coming down from Bougainville for night landing operations). Just before 4 p.m. they sighted six destroyers in parallel columns. Lou Kirn led nine' SBDs out to intercept them. Kirn, Weary and Frank got hits; one destroyer was seen to sink, another was left floundering. Forty minutes later Purdum and Russell led six more SBDs out and finished off a third destroyer. But the three remaining destroyers came on, so from time to time during the night eleven SBDs took off to drop flares and heckle them with night dives as they tried to land men and battle-stuff near Cape Esperance.

The last plane landed at 4:45 a.m. That was the end of a 26-hour day--but it was also the beginning of another day. There were 35 days.

The Squadron. Kirn's squadron was a ' quiet one. It flew with a steady hand and did not stunt. It did its job and then talked about something else. It groused a bit for the good of its health, but on the whole it was brave, cooperative, steady, unboastful. Its pet swearword, which it picked up from Al Frank, was "Oh, Krause!" Its pet salute was what Red Wages described as a Jap salute: both hands, fingers spread.

The squadron was about half skipper.

Bullet Lou Kirn (he got his nickname and his cagey heart at Annapolis, playing football) was all Navy: a bear for work, a hater but an understander of red tape, not a liberty hound, never so tired he could not jack his tired men. Bob Milner, the squadron's Executive Officer, was the opposite of relaxed Lou Kirn. In the cockpit he jumped around like a monkey, twisting knobs, pushing levers, pulling his hood open and slamming it shut again, punching out Morse-code messages to his wingmen with his fist. But he was a smooth flyer who led a dangerous division. On the cots in front of their tents in the evenings he would start bull sessions on the squadron's weaknesses.

Al Frank, of Princeton and the University of Chicago, was a gentle guy, who carried books right to Guadal. The red-haired MacNair, big, burly and a slave laborer, was Flight Officer: he used to discuss religion and marriage and the mystery of becoming a father 6,000 miles from the delivery room. Bill Henry and Al Russell were incurable souvenir hunters who came out loaded with doodads like a couple of Cook's tourists. Ralph Weymouth, married to a French girl, talked world affairs. Neil Weary was the playboy. Dick Balenti was called The Chief because his Indian blood showed. Al Wright passed the cigars every evening and told, magic tales of Hollywood. They and their companions all leaned on the enlisted men--Gunter, Johnston, Farrell and the others.

The Lessons. These men learned lessons which will help beat the Japs. They learned the difficulties of dive-bombing destroyers, which are as hard to catch in the open sea as a cockroach on a kitchen floor. They learned the most advantageous level to begin dives into ack-ack. They learned the best way to deal with Zeros. Some squadrons boast of the number of lives they have given for their country. But Kirn's men are proud of how much they did with so little loss. The lessons learned by Kirn's men will be of service to the country because they came back alive.

Emory S. ("Red") Wages Jr., the pudgy genial Georgian who regaled the squadron's junior officers with tales of his amours, went out on a search one day, tapped out a last message about low gas, and went in. Oran ("Fig") Newton Jr., who had animal nicknames for most of the boys, such as Al Dog for Wright and Red Bird for Wages, was shot out of a dive by A.A. That was all: two pilots. Four enlisted men are missing.

This conservatism was not a lack of daring. It was due to smart soldiering and to Lou Kirn's emphasis on drill, drill, drill. Bullet Lou Kirn will be proudest of his men if they go through the war killing Japs with this saying in the back of their heads: "I don't want to be the best pilot, I just want to be the oldest."

The What's What of Airplanes

Published last week was a weighty volume which is accorded such importance that the U.S. Government demands the name of everyone purchasing a copy. The 1942 edition of Aerosphere weighs nine pounds, costs $12.50, contains 1,156 pages and just about everything publishable about the world's airplanes, including more than 1,000 photographs. Circulation: 10,000 to 15,000.

For a time it seemed that young Publisher Charles E. Thorp (Harvard '25) would be forced to pass up the publication of the third edition of his mammoth work. But he and Editor Glenn D. Angle, onetime chief engine designer for the Air Corps, managed to talk their way past a War Department order which would have stopped all scientific compendia. Finally, after approving the Aerosphere's text (and deleting much recent data which manufacturers had offered), the War Department ordered 300 copies. Publisher Thorp intends to present copies to the Chinese, British and Russian Embassies for forwarding to Chiang Kaishek, Churchill and Stalin. Other foreigners who order copies must be approved.

Aerosphere is an American answer to the English Jane's All the World's Aircraft, with many improvements over Jane's, including better pictures, better printing and a listing of every U.S. manufacturer with an interest in planes (3,559 firms as against 2,919 last year). Nonetheless, Aerosphere is indebted to the English magazines Flight and The Aeroplane for its best drawings. Highlights:

P:Aerosphere foresees cannon displacing machine guns almost completely as plane armament before the war ends. "The steel men are manufacturing better armor plate, against which only guns of high caliber can be pitted, calibers which may run as high as 75 mm."

P: "There is now a tendency towards low-level bombing to the displacement of high-level bombing altogether. . . . Normal anti-aircraft guns mounted on the ground cannot follow low-flying aircraft more than a few seconds [and] fighter planes cannot dive down upon the bombers."

P: Aerosphere refuses to throw up its hands at Japanese planes, doggedly reprints prewar information "which had not rated the Japanese planes very high," but admits that "such destruction of life and property . . . from a presumably weak air force caused most everyone to wonder."

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