Nation: Team Player for the Joint Chiefs

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And the Air Force keeps flying high

As a newly appointed aide to Strategic Air Command Boss Curtis LeMay, Lieut. Colonel David C. Jones was apprehensive when he planned a 1956 flight with the tough-talking general to Goose Bay in Labrador. Jones' concern turned out to be justified. LeMay walked unexpectedly through a door in the C-97, and a startled flight engineer dropped a hatch, which hit the general on the head. Next a crewman guarding another open hatch was distracted just as LeMay approached, and the commander fell into the hole, suffering scratches and bruises. Finally, LeMay was walking forward in the aircraft, lighting his ever present cigar, when someone unintentionally slammed a door in his face. "I think they're trying to kill me," LeMay grumbled.

"After that," Jones recalls, "we operated a little more efficiently." Davey Jones not only survived that trip, but he has functioned so efficiently ever since that last week he was named by President Jimmy Carter to become the new head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In an otherwise routine shift of three top-level military commands, Jones, 56, and the Air Force won an unexpected victory by gaining the two-year appointment to the nation's highest uniformed post at a time when traditional rotation policy would have turned it over to the Army. Jones will succeed another Air Force general, the controversial and talkative George S. Brown, on July 1. That is when Brown, who is ill with cancer of the prostate will complete his second term.

The elevation of the hard-driving Jones, whose dark circles under the eyes accurately convey the career-long intensity of his striving for the top, was interpreted at the Pentagon as a reward for the relative combat readiness of the Air Force, as well as for Jones' own willingness to go along with White House-approved defense policies. Jones, as Air Force Chief of Staff, fought hard for production of the B-l bomber but refused to wage any further fight to save it once the President had made his decision against the aircraft. Similarly, Jones argued both publicly and privately in behalf of the Panama Canal treaties negotiated by the Administration. Former Navyman Carter was known to be unhappy with the Navy, which has been openly fighting for more carriers and a bigger role in defense strategy. It has also been plagued by poor management as various shipbuilding programs have incurred delays and huge cost overruns. As for the Army, Chief of Staff Bernard Rogers made it clear that he did not want the J.C.S. chairmanship.

While it was not the Navy's turn to head the joint chiefs, some Pentagon observers saw a message for that service in the retention of the post by the Air Force. "The Administration wants no boat-rockers in the new J.C.S.," said one civilian defense official. "The Administration is telling the Navy that if it wants to play rough, the Administration can play rougher."