NAVY: Broad Stripes for Mustangs

White-haired, square-prowed Rear Admiral Chester William Nimitz, sitting with the House Naval Affairs Committee few weeks ago, took a look at the naval horizon through a seaman’s spyglass. “Probably many of the Admirals of the future,” said the Navy’s Chief of the Bureau of Navigation (personnel boss), “will never have been to Annapolis.” Committee members found this wild prophecy just funny. Since 1900 there have been no more than four officers of flag rank who were not Annapolis graduates: since 1914 not a single one.

But Admiral Nimitz probably had the laugh on his listeners. The Naval Academy at Annapolis will never be able to supply the officer demand of the two-ocean Navy. To man the U. S. fleets of 1946-47, the Navy will need 36,000 officers, 15,000 more to man its planes. Last summer, at the start of the two-ocean program, the Navy had only 10,817 officers all told. And it will get no more than 700 annually from Annapolis’ expanded enrollment (beginning next June).

This week, as the House passed and sent to the Senate a bill increasing the Navy’s authorized man power to 300,000, the Navy’s new officer-training program was well under way. For an output of 6,720 airmen by 1942 it had training stations at Pensacola, Jacksonville and Corpus Christi (TIME, Feb. 17). For its 5,000 new officers a year for ship and shore duty, the Navy had lined up 5,600 candidates for its first group. Specifications: single men, 21-to-26, with at least two years of college. Through the summer and fall the students got their seagoing foundation in ships of the Atlantic Fleet: the battleships Arkansas and New York, cruisers Quincy, Tuscaloosa, Wichita, Vincennes. After 25 days at sea they had the bare rudiments of navigation, gunnery, communications and seamanship, had also learned how to scrub their clothes white, how to face aft when they came over the side and salute the quarterdeck (where in early navies the ships carried their shrines and pagan altars). Rest of the education is being provided this winter and spring in three-month classes at Annapolis, Northwestern University and on the hulk of the old battleship Illinois, now the Prairie State, tied up in the Hudson at the foot of Manhattan’s 136th Street.

Last week Northwestern started its third class (850 candidates), the Prairie State was polishing up its third (500), Annapolis its first (703). Already graduated from the schools and bright with new gold braid were 1,776 new ensigns, some already assigned to service, some waiting at home for assignment. Commissioned in the Naval Reserve, the best of these mustangs (Navy for non-Annapolis officers) will have a crack at regular commissions in the Navy by meeting the Navy’s qualifications after one year of sea service. In the long run, as Admiral Nimitz predicted, some of them may even wear the broad stripe of the Admiral’s rank. For next fall’s program another 5,000-odd will be enrolled, sent to training. But from its experience with the first group the Navy has decided to make the going tougher. From now on, candidates will have to be college graduates, have a sound foundation in mathematics.