I love the film, but there's a minor illogicality in it......The Army fights the beast in the New York streets; the Air Force does the bomb test that revives the monster at the beginning of the film. Yet the men are taking orders from Colonel Evans (Kenneth Tobey) in both cases. Is he a colonel in both the Army and the Air Force?
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Yes and we won't even go into the fact that Tobey was a lowly "captain" in 1951's "The Thing From Another World" in which he had top billing.
shareIf you save the world and efficiently cover it up, you deserve to get promoted three ranks in two years...and there was a really bad SecDef at the time known for cutting budgets to the bone, a very junior colonel as Chairman of the JCS could have happened. It's just sad that he was forced out of the military and wound up an abusive racist law enforcement officer in an obscure place in the Southwest less than 20 years later...
shareIf someone is put in charge of a military operation, he is in charge of all personnel assigned to the operation. No matter what service they are in. Or even what country they serve if the operation involves an alliance.
For example, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe is an American four star general or admiral in command of Nato forces in Europe that includes the armies, navies, and air forces of many NATO nations. And many subordinate NATO commanders command forces from mixed services and mixed nations.
So I find it easy to believe that Colonel Evans could be in command of the Air Force test and the Army's defense of NYC.