John in Washington knew nothing about this "chance encounter" between Randolph and Maersk. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

On New Year's Day, he took Adele and little Ella to the Finnish Embassy in the United States. There, he was honored along with a group of "American friends" who had helped Finland defend itself against Soviet aggression.

John was awarded a knight's White Rose Order of the First Class this time. The Order of the White Rose is the second highest order in Finland, after the Freedom Cross. Although the Order of the White Rose of the First Class is not as precious as the Order of the Great White Rose or the Order of the White Rose of the Sabre, it is already very valuable for a foreign soldier.

John himself didn't feel much about the award, but both Adele and Little Ella were very excited about it.

Princess Ella is proud that her father is a heroic, noble, and romantic White Rose Knight (I don't know how she made it up). After John "dedicated" the medal to her, she graciously forgave her father for his "serious mistake" of missing her fifth birthday party on the 13th of this month.

As for Adele, when she woke up the next morning, John's sore old waist was the best evidence of her praise for her husband.

At the beginning of the new year, John's work became extremely busy. The proposal he had submitted earlier on the reform of logistics management had finally received some response. It was not the Army Staff that first adopted John's suggestion, but the Army Air Command, led by General Arnold.

Marshall's personnel layout of the Army Staff was now unfinished, and John's proposal was still locked in his filing cabinet. But General Arnold could no longer tolerate the chaos of a dozen of his staff's departments, each running its own way.

Arnold personally approached Marshall and asked for a change in the current organizational structure of the Army Aviation Command.

Arnold threw a dizzy organizational chart on Marshall's desk: "George, look at it. This is like an organizational chart of the Army Air Corps, which is simply a plate of spaghetti. ”

"The day before yesterday, the training department submitted a report to me that it plans to train 12,000 pilots every quarter this year." Alexander-Arnold then complained: "I asked him where he came up with that number and the training department told me it was entirely their own imagination. It has nothing to do with the Ordnance Service's aircraft procurement plan and the Operations Service's force expansion plan. ”

"More than a dozen departments, all behind closed doors, make up their own plans, and make up a lot of inexplicable data, all of which are not correct, and they can't be connected!" Arnold became more and more agitated the more he spoke: "I sometimes have to ask four different departments for the same information, and then pick out the two closest sets of numbers as the correct answers. ”

"It's ridiculous, George. We've put so much effort into gathering intelligence about the enemy, but how much do we know about our own situation, by which I mean the real and accurate situation, not the garbage data that we have made up in our heads?"

Marshall understood Arnold very well, and this situation existed not only in the Army Air Corps, but also in the Army itself. It was only because he did not yet have full control of the leadership of the army that he had to put the issue aside for the time being. Since Arnold himself took the initiative, he went with the flow and agreed to let the Army Air Command take the lead and take the lead in carrying out reforms.

"What are you going to do, Henry?" Marshall asked.

"Didn't that kid from the Vanderbilt family have a suggestion before, full asset transparency. I plan to set up an independent statistics department and find out my family background first. ”

When Arnold came out of Chief of Staff Marshall's office, a completely new department was born in the Army Air Command, the Statistical Management and Control Office. It may sound inconsequential, and outsiders can't figure out what this department does.

When the new department posted notices on the bulletin boards of the bases of the air forces to recruit statistical control personnel, it even drew bursts of ridicule. Someone said, "God knows what a statistical controller does?" Do you count bottle caps in the welfare home? ”

No one would have imagined that when World War II ended, this small department, which was composed of only a dozen experts and scholars and intellectuals with business management experience, would become the brain of the US Air Force.

The 3,000 elite officers (all trained at Harvard Business School) and 15,000 logistics personnel from the Statistics and Control Office will organize, manage, and drive every U.S. Air Force operation around the world at 66 sites around the world, using the world's largest centrally controlled computer equipment and independent telex systems.

Arnold's original idea was for John to be the head of the new department, but Marshall did not agree. For him, John is a very important card that must be grasped in his own hands and cannot be easily handed over to outsiders, even if he is as close as Arnold.

If the bright one doesn't work, then the dark one can only come. Arnold turned around and went to Major General Boer, saying that he wanted to borrow John for a few months to help him complete the preparation of the statistical control office. This time, Arnold got his way. John was sold from the Arms Building on Constitution Avenue to the Ammunition Building in Washington Square.

The only unlucky guy in this deal is John himself, who has no idea. He has done the work and has not been paid as he deserves. If he becomes the head of the Statistics Control Division of the Army Aviation Command, he will be promoted at least one more level, and the silver leaf will be replaced by an eagle (the rank of colonel).

Poor John, who became a "free laborer" and thought that he had finally discovered his "talent", was busy in the Army Aviation Command. He even took the initiative to call McNamara, who had already returned to work at FedEx, and asked him to recommend a few students to the Statistics Control Office.

There is another stimulus to John's drive. The H-1 fighter jets that were recently sold to the Finns gave him and Hughes Aircraft a good face.

When the H-1s arrived in Finland, they were assigned to the Swedish Volunteer Air Corps. The air force has about 900 crew and ground crew, all from the Swedish Air Force.

Before the arrival of the H-1 fighters, these men took off their uniforms and joined the Finnish Air Force's flying elite as civilians, because there were no planes to watch from the ground.

Now that the plane arrived, they couldn't wait to start showing their skills. One of the fighter pilots, while on a solitary patrol in the air, shot down 6 of the 7 Ilyushin bomber formations in one fell swoop.

Even more legendary, on New Year's Day, two H-1 fighters ventured through the Soviet air defense network and appeared over Leningrad (St. Petersburg). The planes did not attack any targets, but dropped a million pages of leaflets, which the local Ministry of the Interior had to work for days to clear them.

But it was enough to disgrace Stalin once again. A few days later, the news appeared in news reports in major media outlets around the world. Not only did these two pilots become heroes, but the H-1 fighter also showed its face in front of the people of the world, and its popularity skyrocketed.

Thinking of the upcoming influx of international orders, John felt that he was full of energy, and he naturally worked harder.