Former Air Force Chief of Staff : Retired Gen. John Paul McConnell Dies

John Paul McConnell, a retired general who served as vice commander of the Strategic Air Command and Air Force chief of staff in the years of the peak air wars over North Vietnam, died Nov. 21. The four-star general was 78 and died in a nursing home here of cancer.

In the 1950s, McConnell served as plans director of SAC, when the intercontinental ballistic missile program was begun, and later was named vice commander.

In 1962, McConnell was named deputy commander of American forces in Europe. After serving a year as Air Force vice chief of staff, he took the service’s top post. In 1967 he publicly opposed President Lyndon B. Johnson’s limiting the bombing of North Vietnam, telling the Senate the move cost American lives. He retired in 1969.

During World War II, McConnell had served in the China-Burma-India theater, where he became senior air staff officer at the headquarters of Lord Mountbatten, the theater commander. By the end of the war, McConnell, who became a brigadier general at the age of 36, was chief of staff of U.S. Air Forces in China.

McConnell coached high school football and worked as an oil field laborer before attending the U.S. Military Academy, where he graduated in 1932.

After the war, he served a short time as senior air adviser to the Chinese Nationalists, then came to Washington as head of the Reserve and National Guard division.

McConnell received two Distinguished Service Medals, four awards of the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star and the Air Medal.