USTDC

Photo of USTDC courtesy of Les Duffin

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Change of Command

I posted information some time ago that I received from Sarj Bloom about the 1962 change of command ceremony for Admirals Smoot (outgoing) and Melson.

Sarj just sent me another photo of that event, this one showing all of the other officers who participated. Here's his narrative:

I don't recognize too many of the officers, but maybe others will. Starting at the left, the first officer I recognize is an AF Lt. Colonel -- I think his name was McNulty -- and next to him an Army Major. They were both in our section, J-24I. Further to the left and in the front between two Navy officers is AF Colonel Boggs. I remember Boggs because he was the only one who wrote to me when I was hospitalized at Clark AF Base in the Philippines for an eye injury.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What grabbed my eye was the sharpness of the men standing at attention. I guess you could add another Label to this post, “Old School.”

Don said...

Yeah, I noticed a couple of things: all shoes were spit-shined (long before Corfam high-gloss shoes) and if you look closely, you'll see that the Air Force general in front of the group is standing inside a chalk circle, just like the admirals in the earlier photo of this event.

Just think, probably some protocol guy had the job of telling admirals and generals where to go! How cool a job would that be?

Victor said...

I think the protocol guy's job was more than that. If you look carefully in the photo, not only the admirals and the generals, but all the officers were standing on chalk marks shaped under their shoes on the pavement.