On Top of the World

An airman who also knows how to fight on the ground was appointed last week commander of all Army, Navy and Air forces in Alaska.

Soft-voiced Major General William E. Kepner, 57, was a soldier's soldier before he became an airman's airman. He began his military career at 16 when he ran away from Kokomo (Ind.) High School and joined the Marine Corps. Seven years later he marched to the Mexican border with the Indiana National Guard. In 1918 he was an infantry captain in France, won a Distinguished Service Cross, was bayoneted in the back and had half his jaw shot off. After World War I he took to the air.

As a balloonist, with Captains Albert Stevens and Orvil Anderson (now an Air Force major general), he took a balloon 60,613 feet into the stratosphere before a rip in the fabric sent the bag plummeting earthward. The three bailed out --Kepner at 500 feet. Then Bill Kepner moved on to airplanes. In World War II he wore a general's stars, but frequently left his desk to fly combat missions. He was chief of the hard-flying Eighth Air Force Fighter Command, a principal Allied weapon in the destruction of the German Luftwa\int\int e.

After the war, General Kepner was air commander at the Bikini atomic tests, more recently has been commander of the Air Force's proving ground at Eglin Field, Florida. In sending him to Alaska, the Defense Department was putting a veteran interceptor on top of the world, along the short Arctic air route to the U.S. from Russia.

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