Word: commandant
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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Despite all objections, the Navy and the Defense Department decided on the expensive gamble. Red Raborn found himself in command of a program that demanded more of U.S. science and technology than any military program had ever demanded before. His submarine was yet to be built; its navigation system was still in the planning stage. His missile had neither its guidance system, its rockets nor the solution to its launching problems. "But I had all the tools I needed,'' he recalls. "I had authority, and I had money...
...installed, they became the most complex vehicles ever built for the sea. And by the time George Washington was ready for launching last December (just as the PERT charts predicted), the men who had been chosen to manage her fantastic hardware were as impressive as the ship herself. Commander James Butler Osborn, the crewcut, square-jawed skipper who looks like a football player, talks like a Marine drill sergeant and thinks like a well-trained engineer, seemed almost in love with his exquisite command. "This ship," he insisted, "is not a problem in physics; it's an article...
This was the payoff on the bold gamble that committed $3.5 billions of the national defense budget before a single shot was fired. It was the first installment on the Polaris fleet that will run up a bill as large as the entire budget for the Strategic Air Command. But it was a cold war bargain. "It is not nearly so expensive," says Red Raborn proudly, "as a weapon that would not be pre-eminent in war. The second-best weapon is the one that costs too much." Last week there were few to argue that Polaris was second best...
Nixon, despite the fact that the convention has undeniably given him command over the Republicans, still has to remember that it was under the President's respectable wing that he flourished for nearly eight years. If he hopes to conserve the votes of those who know him as Ike's protege, he can hardly afford to take too many potshots at the bird. With visions of conservative affection for Taft-like politics dancing in his mind, he must ensure that the Old Guard will not find him indistinguishable from his powerful opponents and stay away from the polls...
...weather was clear. The plane presumably was flying at its assigned altitude of 12,000 ft., within easy reach of the most obsolete fighter, and on the course other U.S. ferret planes had regularly flown before. But the Russians must have planned carefully. U.S. monitors listening in on Soviet command channels heard no messages transmitted between Russian bases and the plane...