According to Plan

ARMED FORCES According to Plan (See Cover)

Deep in the concrete cobweb which is the Pentagon, is a softly carpeted, closely guarded room. There, one day last week, gathered the four men charged with the defense of the U.S. against its enemies. Together they constituted the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There was lanky, homely Chairman Omar Bradley, the map of Missouri on his face and the map of Europe behind him on the wall; the Air Force's handsome, greying General Hoyt Vandenberg, lounging long-legged in his leather chajr; the Army's peppery, prow-chinned General Joe Collins, who likes to do a lot of the talking. At Bradley's left sat a pink-faced man with thin hair who wears his four-star admiral's uniform with the careful air of a Sunday-best suit.

The topic laid out on the long mahogany table last week, as it had been the week before, was guided missiles--a subject which the Navy probably knows most about. The discussion was detailed and technical; it was also secret, and properly so. The man in the admiral's uniform spoke only occasionally, and then in a quiet voice, but the words were to the point, and the mind behind them forceful. Fellow members of the Joint Chiefs had learned to listen carefully to the Navy's Forrest Percival Sherman. The U.S., as the Joint Chiefs already knew, had found a fighting man of rare qualities: the man of action who is also reflective, studious, habitually unruffled.

The freshman member of the Joint Chiefs, he had stepped into his job four months ago when he became Chief of Naval Operations, in an atmosphere acrid with controversy and resentment. He had brought to the nation's highest military council something that had been too much forgotten in the jealous and unseemly interservice fights over unification--a grasp of international strategy, military history and geopolitics. He had, in fact, some of the broad-gauge character of men like Clay, Eisenhower, MacArthur--a type of mind which, on the record, West Point seemed to produce more often than Annapolis. His grasp was sorely needed, at a time when there were some who blared that nothing had changed--though an explosion, deep in the dark spaces of Russia, had wiped out the U.S.'s atomic advantage, and the loss of China had swung one-fifth of the world's population to the Soviet sphere. The fact was that in the space of eight months, the world's balance of power had shifted sharply toward the U.S.'s enemy.

It was high time for a reassessment of the nation's forces, Forrest Sherman argued, and other J.C.S. members agreed, although none could argue it with the eloquence of Navyman Sherman. Russia was spending four times as much of its income as the U.S. on armaments, already had the world's largest army and air force, was hard at work building a navy.

A reassessment, if the J.C.S. followed Sherman, and for that matter, Airman Vandenberg, would mean the end of the concept of the "balanced force"--at least insofar as it operated on the "a-pistol-for-Mole, a-pistol-for-Badger, a-pistol-for-Rat" three-way even split of the defense dollar. It would probably mean a bigger Air Force and a bigger Navy, a smaller share for the Army.

The Attack. First priority was to make sure that the U.S. was in a position to survive an initial, devastating attack against the nation's industrial centers, and that the J.C.S. recognized it as a job primarily for air power--Navy air as well as Air Force. The Soviet Union now has some 350 bombers modeled on the 6-29, which could reach almost any point in the U.S., drop their bombs, land on the nearest airfield and surrender. Neither the U.S. radar net nor the U.S.'s interceptor forces were adequate to stop them.

The Air Force, in & out of Joint Chief sessions, has never stopped insisting that it needed the full 70-group force equipped with modern aircraft which was recommended by the Finletter Commission. (Air Force Secretary W. Stuart Symington told Congress: "Even this number may be low.") Two years after the Finletter report the U.S. has no 70-group Air Force, nor anything near it, nor any appropriations to get it. Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, a week after crowing to newsmen that the present 48-group force is now "the equivalent" of the Finletter's 70 groups, said it more accurately in a message to Congress last week: the U.S. now has the equivalent of 52 1/2 groups. An Air Force general testified that if groups with modern equipment was what Congress was talking about, the number was 43 or 44.

The Air Force's case was easily argued. But why, in the age of H-bombs and long-range bombers, did the U.S. need_a bigger Navy? Sherman's predecessor, amiable, ineffectual Louis Denfeld, had never been quite able to explain. Once when a J.C.S. member asked him about the Navy and its plans for antisubmarine warfare, Denfeld sighed: "Oh, you wouldn't understand it."

The Enemy. The Russian navy, Sherman pointed out, is a "very powerful navy"--for Russia's special purposes. And it is growing. Fortnight ago the Russians announced the creation of a separate navy ministry under chunky Admiral Ivan S. Yumashev. His Soviet navy already has 270 submarines, many of the latest design. It is reportedly building its submarine force up to 1,000, and constructing three modern battleships, probably to be used as guided-missile ships.

Devising means to meet the deadly menace of the U.S.S.R.'s submarines was a key task for the U.S. Navy, but it was only part of its function. The Navy's job, Sherman argued, was also to keep the fighting on the far side of the ocean, to help grab advance air bases, and to deliver the U.S.'s fighting strength when it was needed. For all these, the big carrier is still the Navy's most powerful basic weapon; it can roam anywhere, strike far and with surprise. The J.C.S. was willing to listen. In the new budget the Navy had taken the heaviest slash. After the public quarreling over the 6-36, the Chiefs were anxious to prove that the services could get along; Omar Bradley in particular profoundly regretted his "fancy Dans" gibe at the Navy's admirals.

From the J.C.S. Sherman won permission to put an extra cruiser into operation, then wangled another four destroyers. He got approval for as many Marine battalion landing teams as he could squeeze into his budget (probably eight instead of the scheduled six). Finally by squeezing his budget some more, he got an extra carrier. Next he hoped to get 32 more destroyers, and 400 more planes a year. The Navy, which in the heat of change of command had whispered that Sherman was ambitious, cold and ruthless, was amazed and delighted. One officer, who had greeted Sherman's advent with "This is a dark day for the Navy," admitted later: "The Navy hasn't seen anything like him in a long time."

Intent Man. At 53, Forrest Sherman is the youngest man (and first career airman) to be Chief of Naval Operations. A stocky man (5 ft. 9 in., 168 Ibs.) with a rolling, pigeon-toed gait, he has none of the traditional sea dog's look of shaggy-browed sternness. His smile is quick, friendly but curiously remote. His eyes appraise impersonally without open -approval or rancor, like the eyes of an airman inspecting an engine. Always, he keeps an air of detachment.

"Right from the beginning," said his Annapolis roommate, Merton ("Sticks") Wade, "he knew precisely what he wanted. He wanted to get to the top." And right from the beginning, as a boy, Forrest Sherman had wanted to go to sea. Before he could read, he was fascinated by woodcuts of sailing ships in an old history book. The high-school class prophet predicted confidently that he would be an admiral. His singleminded intentness was the kind that wins admiration, but seldom popularity. "You can't get good marks if you're popular," he once told his sister.

The second of a family of six sons-and a daughter, Forrest Percival Sherman was born to the headmaster of a small school in Reeds Ferry, N.H. (pop. 265) and to a mother whose forebears were John and Priscilla Alden. Shermans had fought with the colonists against the Dutch, gone with Benedict Arnold to Quebec.

Forrest grew up in a big, comfortable Victorian house in Melrose, outside Boston. He built model ships, and with his pals re-enacted the charge of San Juan Hill in the wood behind the house, using cordwood for cannon.

In summer his grandfather, a retired whaling captain who lived outside New Bedford, took him sailing in his catboat, taught him how to tie sailor's knots and to eat salt pork (anyone planning to follow the sea for a living had to learn to like salt pork, the old man told him). One day, far out on Buzzards Bay, the old man died of a heart attack. Twelve-year-old Forrest was not rattled. He lowered the ensign to half-mast as stipulated by naval custom, sailed the catboat safely back to harbor.

"This Was the System." At Annapolis, for reasons that no one recalls, Sherman acquired the nickname "Joe." But every classmate knows how young (17), undersized Plebe Sherman got an unfortunate reputation among upperclassmen. "Joe wasn't really cocky," said his roommate, "he just wasn't uncertain, as most kids that age are." Though many of his classmates had never seen a ship, the crew-cut kid with the square chin was a walking encyclopedia of Navy history, engagements and ships. In dining hall, when first classmen at his table fired questions at him, Sherman always knew the answers-- and often in more detail than his seniors. "You're too smart; get under the table," he was ordered, and there he sat, without dinner, taking his hazing. The hazers, rougher than they are these days, sought him out in barracks. They made him stand for an hour at attention holding a heavy book extended in one hand. On cold nights, he was shoved under a cold shower and his bedding thrown in with him. "He never complained, even to me," said his roommate. "This was the system and this was the life he wanted for himself. So O.K."

Too light for football, Sherman made the fencing team, was pronounced by the Lucky Bag "supreme as a fusser [a genteel wolf] and yard reptile [a midshipman who squires the daughters of Annapolis captains and admirals]." He was also something of a teacher's pet. When a classmate asked a difficult question, the instructor would have Sherman stand up and reel off the answer. Sherman stood second in the wartime Class of 1918, which graduated a year ahead of its time. As the new ensign hurried off to war, the Lucky Bag summarized: "Forrest Percival has been the object of ridicule in some quarters and an envied example in others. He is our most convincing argument for the theory that 'brains is king.' "

Two Sails. Sherman remembers his chagrin when he saw his first ship--the Nashiille, an ancient cruiser that had fired the first shot in the Spanish-American War and steamed off to World War I with the help of two sails. Now, he likes to remember his tour in the Nashville as a personal link to the Navy's windjamming past. But staring into salt spray for periscopes did not fit Forrest Sherman's plans for long. He wanted to be a Navy aviator.

He became one of the Navy's best pilots; in 1932, he won the personal Navy E for dive bombing and fixed (i.e., fighter) gunnery. In his spare time, while other officers swapped scuttlebutt over wardroom coffee, Sherman read economics and world politics. He poured out scholarly articles for Navy publications, studded them with quotations from Napoleon, Lee and Moltke, ranged in subject from critiques on the 1918 air war in Palestine to suggestions for carrier design. Many of his contemporaries found his singleminded-ness irritating. But his superiors were delighted with a staff officer they could lean on; subordinates liked a man who always knew just what he wanted to do.

In 1940, Sherman became the Navy's chief aviation plans officer. There he learned something of the green tables of diplomacy. He sat on the Canada-U.S. Joint Defense Board, accompanied Franklin Roosevelt to the Atlantic Conference. Said his boss, irascible old Admiral Richmond ("Kelly") Turner: "He was a grease-lightning operator, a box of brains. He always had a plan--never left anything to chance."

Three Torpedoes. Sherman was also a fighter. After Pearl Harbor, he begged for a chance at combat, got command of the Wasp, a small (14,700 tons) carrier that was already outdated by the new Essex-class flattops then abuilding. Under him the Wasp was a taut, efficient and happy ship. The flight plan he worked out for his air group became the pattern through the War for all U.S. carriers.

But one day, as the Wasp plowed in formation through a bright Pacific sea, 300 miles southeast of Guadalcanal, three Jap torpedoes struck home. Fire reared high from her ruptured tanks; gasoline spread around her in a sea of flames. Like many another skipper, Sherman had long before figured out just what he would do if he "caught a fish." In an inferno of smoke and exploding ammunition, he maneuvered his ship so that the flames blew away from the hull, backed her stern clear of the flaming, gasoline-covered water. Sherman was the last man to leave. He was burned, and badly shaken up by depth charges while he was in the water; 193 of his men were dead. But through the lane he had cleared off the stern, 2,054 had swum to safety.

Sherman never saw combat again. For the rest of the war, he was the major planner in the greatest campaign the U.S. Navy ever fought. As Deputy Chief of Staff to Admiral Chester Nimitz, Sherman insisted after Tarawa that the tactically unimportant, heavily defended islands of Maloelap and Wotje should be bypassed, and Kwajalein attacked in one long, 250-mile jump. Said Kelly Turner: "Admiral Spruance and I were astounded." But Sherman was right--so right that the Navy and Kelly Turner's amphibious-force troops hopped on to grab Eniwetok. Thus the Navy's spectacular leapfrogging technique was born. Often, Nimitz remembers, he and Sherman would retire to the big map room where they would talk, look at the map and think. Said Nimitz: "Sherman never hesitated when things looked worst. He's a realist without being a pessimist."

At war's end, when Nimitz became Chief of Naval Operations, he gave Sherman the job of working out the unification agreement. Sherman dutifully sat down with his friend Lieut. General Lauris Norstad of the Army Air Force and negotiated agreement. To the anti-unification Navymen, led by Vice Admiral Arthur Radford, this was just short of treason to their service. When Denfeld brought Radford to Washington as his vice chief, Sherman went off to take command of the Mediterranean Fleet.

Precision Tools. There Sherman became an on-the-ground leader in the cold war, learned the uses of naval forces as "the precision tools of diplomacy." He flung 80 planes over Italy at election time. His ships visited North African ports, dropped in at Naples, Trieste and Athens. Sherman took tea with Britain's Earl Mountbatten, visited the Pope, swam with Greece's King Paul and his Queen.

He kept a battalion of marines scattered through his fleet. On Crete and on a small island near Malta, they practiced the delaying actions that might be needed to evacuate U.S. citizens abroad. Says Sherman: "As a decisive deterrent to

Pentagon to get a rubdown at the dispensary; every day he is at his fourth-deck office _at 9 a.m. He keeps his desk neat, and his decisions quick. He avoids speaking engagements, ducks parties except in line of duty, prefers to work at home or play bridge, at which he is excellent. He sometimes drinks.a Scotch & soda, but limits himself to one drink. His wife, a Florida girl whom he married while 'he was on duty at Pensacola in 1923, prides herself on her youthful looks. Mrs. Sherman dresses formally for dinner every night. Her principal interest is horses, which she raises; Sherman's principal exercise is riding. A favorite early-morning companion: General George Marshall.

Sherman was shocked at the weakness 'f the Navy's Pacific force when he took over. He sent the Boxer to Manila, is sending the Philippine Sea to the West Coast. The Russians, he thinks, are showing increasing naval interest in the Pacific--reports are that Admiral Yumashev sat in on the conferences with China's Mao. It Sherman has his way the U S 's Seventh Fleet will show the flag from Cam ranh Bay to Batavia.

Sherman's Navy was bustling. Last week^162 ships converged on Vieques Island in the Caribbean in the biggest amphibious exercise since the war. Off San Diego, jet planes landed successfully on a carrier in full darkness for the first time.

Price of Security. As of last week, Admiral Sherman had got himself a Navy of seven fleet carriers, seven smaller carriers, 13 cruisers, 129 destroyers and 72 submarines. Was it enough?

The Administration was qualifiedly reassuring. Harry Truman last week declared that U.S. defenses were in better shape than they had ever been in peacetime. Economy-shouting Secretary Johnson proclaimed that the armed services were far better than they were two years ago. Both statements might be true, but neither answered the question. Was it enough? Sherman, speaking as a professional man, answers candidly: "The answer always has to be no."

Sherman, like most top-rung military leaders, recognizes that a sure defense is more_ than a free economy can buy and remain a free economy. He also recognizes that the U.S.'s real strength lies not in its active forces but in its massive industrial capacity. (Said Chester Nimitz: "The U.S.'s major strength factor and weapon is its economy. If you cripple it, you cripple the military.") But there is a minimum defense force which the U.S. must have, and every one of the Joint Chiefs believes that Louis Johnson's $13 billion budget is not enough.

The State Department's ablest geopol-itician, George Kennan, observes shrewdly: "The U.S. has really priced itself out of the market of competitive world power. It costs us so damn much more than the lean & hungry Russians that we can never hope to maintain the force to keep them in effective physical balance." Military men generally agree. What they want is just enough force to make the Russians think twice before striking--and enough, if the Russians do strike, to put up a defense and launch a counterattack.

The Weighing. What is the risk of war? J.C.S. Chairman Omar Bradley thinks 1950 will be a "normal" year comparable to 1913; not until 1952, he feels, is the danger of war likely to be acute. But the Air Force's Vandenberg, whose command would bear the brunt if a surprise attack caught the U.S. napping, is more & more convinced that war is probably inevitable and perhaps imminent. The Navy's Sherman thinks a good deal depends on the U.S. War is avoidable, says Sherman, "if we stomp on the Russian finger everywhere it makes an exploratory feel." He adds: "The survival of this country depends upon letting the world know we have the power and the ability to use it if the occasion demands." ^ It is the job of Harry Truman and his Secretary of Defense to weigh what the economy can stand, the J.C.S.'s job, and Forrest Sherman's, to judge the risks. Between them they hold the nation's life in their hands.

-All five brothers saw service as officers in World War II: Kenneth and Ernest in the Navy, Frank in the Army, Paul as a Regular in the Marines. Edward, the eldest, who lost an eye as a child "in an Indian war," got a waiver and served in the Army.

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