COMMAND: In the Top Layer

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Lieut. General Millard F. Harmon had been missing for eight weeks—the 17th U.S. air general to become a casualty in World War II—and his fast-growing U.S. Air Force in the Pacific was still without a permanent boss. Last week the Army airmen in the Pacific got one. Lieut. General Barney M. Giles, 52, ranking member of the Army's only set of general twins,* cleared out his desk in the Pentagon Building and went off to what will become the biggest air-combat job left in World War II.

Capable, good-natured Barney Giles had left one of the most important staff jobs in the Air Forces: deputy commander of the Army Air Forces and Chief of Air Staff. To replace him, General Hap Arnold called in a distinguished combat veteran, Lieut. General Ira Eaker, 49, onetime fighter pilot and literary collaborator of Hap Arnold. Bald, equable Ira Eaker, who had setup the Eighth Air Force in England, battle-tested the Air Forces doctrine of precision daylight bombing, and forged the first close links between the Air Forces and the R.A.F., had been out of the U.S. since February, 1942.

Rich with good, battle-tested officers, Hap Arnold had no trouble finding a successor for Ira Eaker as head of the Mediterranean Allied Air Force. His choice: husky, bald-headed Lieut. General John K. (Uncle Joe) Cannon, whose Twelfth Air Force in Italy had blasted the way for Allied forces from Salerno to Milan.