New Leader Takes Over Test Center : Point Mugu: The outgoing base commander calls it the best Navy job he ever had.

Standing at attention in dress blues Tuesday, Naval officers and enlisted men at Point Mugu said goodby to their top jet jockey and welcomed the former leader of the Blue Angels precision flying squadron to command the Pacific Missile Test Center.

In a ceremony punctuated by multiple-gun salutes, Rear Adm. George H. Strohsahl turned over command of the base to Rear Adm. William E. Newman, giving up what is arguably the best job inthe Navy for a ranking officer who loves to fly.

“For the last two years, I’ve tried to make time stand still,” Strohsahl said in his farewell speech. “The harder I tried the harder it got. And here I am about to give up the best job I’ve ever had in the Navy.”

Strohsahl, known for his boyish enthusiasm about flying, is headed for what test pilots disparagingly call a “desk job” in Washington. The promotion will put him second in command of the Naval Air Systems Command, in charge of acquiring and testing all of the Navy’s air- and ground-fired missiles.

Newman, Blue Angels flight leader in 1978-79, could hardly restrain his delight in landing the Navy’s top job in Ventura County--which just happens to include as much flying as he can squeeze into his schedule.

“We’re not just jet jockeys, you know,” said Newman, standing next to Strohsahl at the Officers Club on base. Indeed, Newman is assuming command of the nearly 5,000 military personnel and civilians who test the Navy’s most sophisticated jet fighters, high-tech missiles, electronic warfare and other weaponry.

“But you have to get up in the air to keep tabs on what is going on,” Newman said. “Besides, it’s fun.”

In his address to base officials, Newman, 50, said he was “glad to be here” five years after he underwent open-heart surgery. “The Navy is a great organization, it allows you to bounce back from a fall.”

He also said that he was pleased to move to “one of the most beautiful places in the nation” and that he hopes to retire here in his “life after the Navy.”

As for his new command, Newman said he intends to carry on the Pacific Missile Test Center’s role of providing weapons that work to U.S. naval forces in the Middle East and around the globe. He suggested that the United States’ superior technology and sophisticated weaponry--much of which is tested at Point Mugu--must be weighing heavily on the mind of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

During the lengthy ceremony, eight enlisted men collapsed from dehydration, or from locking their knees while standing at attention. All of them were taken by ambulance to a medical clinic on base, treated and released in good condition, said Lt. Cmdr. Gene Okamoto, Point Mugu’s chief spokesman.

“This is common when you are standing at attention for a long period of time,” Okamoto said. “If you don’t make sure your knees are unlocked, you will buckle and fall,” he said. Locked knees can restrict blood circulation and cause fainting.

About 500 Navy enlisted men and Marines stood for more than two hours under sparkling afternoon sunshine. “A couple of them didn’t have lunch,” Okamoto said. “That may have contributed to it too.”