Frank Maxwell Andrews - Later Career, and World War II

Later Career, and World War II

Andrews was passed over for appointment as Chief of the Air Corps following the death of Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover in September 1938, partly because of his aggressive support for strategic bombing. He became a trusted air adviser to George C. Marshall, newly appointed as deputy chief of staff of the Army in 1938, but Andrews pushed too hard for the taste of more senior authorities.

In January 1939, after president Franklin D. Roosevelt had publicly called for a large expansion of the Air Corps, Andrews described the United States as a "sixth-rate airpower" at a speech to the National Aeronautic Association, antagonizing isolationist Secretary of War Harry Woodring, who was then assuring the public of U.S. air strength. At the end of Andrews’ four-year term as Commanding General of GHQAF on March 1, he was not reappointed, reverted to his permanent rank of colonel, and was reassigned as air officer for the Eighth Corps Area in San Antonio, the same exile to which Billy Mitchell had been sent. Possibly expected to retire, he instead was recalled to Washington just four months later by Marshall after President Roosevelt named Marshall to serve as Chief of Staff following the retirement of Gen. Craig. Marshall's first senior staff selection, the selection and its permanent promotion to brigadier general prompted furious opposition from Woodring and others, over which Marshall prevailed after threatening to resign his new post. As Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations (G-3), he was in charge of readying the entire Army in the run-up to America’s inevitable involvement in the war.

In 1940, Andrews assumed control of the Air Corps' Panama Canal Air Force, and in 1941, he became commander of the Caribbean Defense Command, which had the critically important duty during World War II of defending the southern approaches to the United States, including the vital Panama Canal. In February 1942, General Andrews was in Aruba and witnessed the German submarine attack on the island. That same year he went to North Africa, where he spent three months in command of all United States forces in the Middle East from a base in Cairo.

At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Lieut. Gen. Andrews was appointed commander of all United States forces in the European Theater of Operations, replacing Dwight D. Eisenhower. In his memoirs, Gen. Henry H. Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces in World War II, expressed the belief that Andrews would have been given the command of the Allied invasion of Europe — the position that eventually went to Gen. Eisenhower. Gen. Marshall would say, late in life, that Andrews was the only general he had a chance to groom for a possible Supreme Allied Command later in the war.

However, on May 3, 1943, during an inspection tour, Lieut. Gen. Andrews was killed in crash of B-24D-1-CO Liberator, 41-23728, of the 8th Air Force out of RAF Bovingdon, England, on Mt. Fagradalsfjall on the Reykjanes peninsula after an aborted attempt to land at the Royal Air Force station at Kaldadarnes, Iceland. Andrews and thirteen others died in the crash; only the tail gunner, S/Sgt. George A. Eisel of Columbus, Ohio, survived. Others killed in the crash included Adna W. Leonard, presiding Methodist bishop of North America, who was on a pastoral tour; Chaplains Col. Frank L. Miller (Washington, D.C.) and Maj. Robert H. Humphrey (Lynchburg, Va.), accompanying Bishop Leonard; Brig. Gen. Charles M. Barth (hometown Walter, Minn.), Andrews' chief of staff; Col. Morrow Krum (Lake Forest, Ill.), press officer for the ETO; Lt. Col. Fred A. Chapman (Grove Hill, Ala.) and Maj. Theodore C. Totman (Jamestown, N.Y.), senior aides to Andrews; pilot Capt. Robert H. Shannon (Washington, Iowa), of the 330th BS, 93rd BG; Capt. Joseph T. Johnson (Los Angeles); navigator Capt. James E. Gott (Berea, Ky.); Master Sgt. Lloyd C. Wier (McRae, Ark.); Tech. Sgt. Kenneth A. Jeffers (Oriskany Falls, N.Y.); and Staff Sgt. Paul H. McQueen (Endwell, N.Y.).

Andrews was the highest-ranking Allied officer to die in the line of duty to that time in the war. At the time of his death, he was Commanding General, United States Forces, European Theatre of Operations. Camp Springs Army Air Field, Maryland, was renamed Andrews Field (later Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility), for him on 7 February 1945.

Andrews is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.