ARMED FORCES: The Five Nests

Word got around that Major General Orvil A. Anderson’s lectures at the Air Force’s Air War College were something to hear. For three and four hours the general, a crack airman and one of the Air Force’s smartest officers, would privately lecture the officers on the advisability of launching an A-bomb attack on Russia. One day last week a reporter from the Montgomery Advertiser trotted over to Maxwell Field, Ala. to see if he could put the general’s words on the record.

The answer was yes. Orvil Anderson, 55, had been an airman in World War I, deputy commander of the Eighth Air Force in World War II. As an aeronaut, in 1935 he had ballooned to a world’s altitude record of 72,395 ft. Now he dropped all his ballast and talked freely. “We’re at war, damn it,” he said. “I don’t advocate preventive war, I advocate the shedding of illusions. I advocate saying to Stalin: ‘Joe, you’re not kidding anybody. You say you are going to destroy us.’ And if he says, ‘yes’—and he has been saying ‘yes’ all the time—we must conclude civilization demands that we act.

“Give me the order to do it and I can break up Russia’s five A-bomb nests* in a week. And when I went up to Christ, I think I could explain to him why I wanted to do it—now—before it’s too late. I think I could explain to him that I had saved civilization.”

On seeing the story, the Pentagon jumped. Orvil Anderson had said publicly what many a fighting man had said privately; but as a general officer he had no business to vent such opinions, especially in an atmosphere already clouded by Navy Secretary Matthews’ remarks.

To clear the air as well as he could, Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg took prompt action. He suspended Orvil Anderson from command of the Air War College, ordered a formal investigation of Anderson’s interview, and tried to set the record straight. Said he: “The Air Force, first, last and always, is primarily an instrument for peace.”

*Anderson said later that he just picked the number out of the air.