Who Does What Where?

A few more steps were taken last week to unravel the Pacific command situation. Army air forces on Okinawa and other Ryukyu bases were transferred from the command of Admiral Nimitz to General MacArthur.

MacArthur promptly appointed his old right-hand airman, General George C. Kenney, as tactical air commander in the war against Japan. Bristle-haired George Kenney promised to attack "from 10,000 feet and from 10 feet" 24 hours a day.

At that point, the Army air setup looked like this:

P:Kenney's command under MacArthur will include three air forces: the Fifth, commanded by stocky, sallow Lieut. General Ennis C. Whitehead, which fought its way up through Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines; the Thirteenth, now commanded by a smart, 38-year-old pilot, Major General Paul B. Wurtsmith, which started in the Solomons, shifted to New Guinea, recently covered the Australian landings on Borneo; and the Seventh, veteran Central Pacific outfit which started in Hawaii and worked its way westward to Okinawa. The Seventh's commander: Brigadier General Thomas D. White.

P:General Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz's Strategic Air Force (Superfortresses from Doolittle's Eighth and LeMay's Twentieth--TIME, July 16) will operate under neither Nimitz nor MacArthur. Its bosses: General "Hap" Arnold and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

More Unraveling? Naturally Admiral Nimitz kept his mighty carrier-based aviation. He also kept all land-based Navy planes and most Marine aviation in the Pacific--perhaps as many as 3,000 planes.

This partially solved jigsaw puzzle still left out some stray pieces: the Army's Seventh Fighter Command, a part of the Seventh Air Force, is based mostly on Iwo Jima and under Navy command. It escorts not MacArthur's nor Nimitz' planes over Japan, but Spaatz's B-29s.

Wags in the Pacific, only a little more enlightened by last week's air command changes, looked at the overall setup, cracked: "Spaatz will fly to Japan, Nimitz will swim and MacArthur will walk."

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