The Big Stir-Up

ARMY & NAVY

Vice Admiral John Sidney McCain, boss of Task Force 38, fought his valedictory last week somewhere off the coast of Japan. For cocky, 60-year-old "Jock" McCain a quieter job was waiting in Washington: helping General Omar Bradley run the Veterans Bureau.

McCain would follow his opposite number, 58-year-old Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, into drydock. Last week "Pete" Mitscher, who commanded Task Force 58, brooded at a Washington desk. The middle of next month he takes over as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air.

There was one consolation for monastic-looking Pete Mitscher, one of the most spectacular figures in the Pacific war.

Another star was hovering over his three-starred shoulder boards. He would be the Navy's first full Admiral who has devoted his career predominantly to aviation.

His successor is 57-year-old Rear Admiral Frederick Carl Sherman, who was skipper of the Lexington when she was sunk in the world's first carrier battle, in the Coral Sea. Sherman's motto: "Kill the bastards scientifically." McCain's relief is 60-year-old Vice Admiral John Henry Towers, who has been morosely watching the war from an administrative position as Deputy Commander in Chief (for air) of the Pacific Fleet, a job which he is very glad to leave.

These were the principal shifts fortnight ago, in the biggest command stir-up the Navy has had since the war began. Other changes included handsome Vice Admiral Aubrey Fitch, 62, who made way for Mitscher and will become superintendent of the Naval Academy, where one of his first big chores will be to bring flight training to the school and make its graduates as air-wise as West Point's; sardonic Vice Admiral "Genial John" Hoover, 58, one of the Navy's crack administrators, who gets the staff job left vacant by Jack Towers; Rear Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, 54, who will be taken from command of a battleship division and given an unannounced post ashore--probably Chief of the Bureau of Personnel, one of the most worrisome posts in Washington.

Other assignments shifted admirals from desks to ships, from ships to desks in a total of 29 commands. Probably the shifts would be to the general improvement of the Navy. But one point no younger officer could miss. The Navy was still saving its top spots for elderly officers: an admiral under 55 was still considered a boy.-

-Average age for the Navy's three five-star Admirals is 65; for Admirals, 63.6; for Vice Admirals, 59.6; for Rear Admirals, 55. f A redeployment camp for nurses, named for the Army Medical Field Service School at Carlisle, Pa.

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