American naval officer who served in World War I before becoming a navy pilot and working himself up to executive officer of the carrier Yorktown in 1941. During World War II, he trained thousands of pilots for the navy’s rapidly developing air branch. He became rear admiral in 1943, commanding Carrier Division 11. He participated in the attack against the Japanese in the Wake and Gilbert Islands in 1943. After a stint in Washington, he returned to sea duty in November 1944 and participated as commander of Carrier Division 6 in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After the war, in January 1946, he became deputy chief of naval operations for air and took over the Second Task Fleet in the Atlantic in 1947 before becoming commander of the Pacific Fleet in 1948. During the Korean War, he remained commander of the Pacific Fleet and supervised naval operations. In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower named him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, impressed by his experience in Asia, anti-communist credentials, and firm position towards communist China. In early 1954, as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) prepared to throw everything it had, including large amounts of artillery, against the French camp at Dien Bien Phu, Radford strongly supported the idea of an American air intervention to save the besieged French Union forces there. He worked closely with French General Paul Ely on what the French called operation Vautour. On 22 March 1954, as DRV artillery rained down on the French camp, Ely met with President Eisenhower in the presence of Radford. The latter’s plan was to send some 60 B-29 heavy bombers to pound DRV positions at Dien Bien Phu. Radford suggested that the French government send a direct request to the U.S. government along such lines. The French ran with the idea until it became clear that operation Vautour was not going to fly because of Congressional hostility to direct American military intervention.