Questions for Defense

Last week something as tenuous and perhaps as fleeting as the shadow of a bomber's wing spread over Capitol Hill in Washington. It was an uneasy feeling that all is not well with the U. S. Army and Navy. Congress has made no serious bones about letting the Army and Navy have upwards of $3,500,000,000 in this and the next fiscal year. But the new question was: How good a job are the President, the generals and the admirals doing with the money? By week's end the U. S. press, many a U. S. citizen were far ahead of Congress, in full-tongued demand for: 1) more defense money if need be; 2) effective defense, unimpeded by bureaucratic tape and tradition, whatever the cost.

There were several reasons for this uneasiness: 1) World War II had come nearer the U. S. than ever before; 2) flounderings, charges and admissions of inefficiency in London (see p. 54); 3) confusing, conflicting statements by U. S. naval and military men about plane production capacities, aircraft effectiveness, general efficiency of U- S. defense. Columnist Hugh Johnson put the doubts bluntly, blaming Commander in Chief Roosevelt and concluding: "It is better to say this now than later, when we may be staring full into the fire that England faces."

To clear up any implication that the Navy had not been frank with Congress, the Senate Naval Affairs Committee last week had up Secretary Charles Edison. Admiral Harold Raynsford Stark, Chief of Operations, had lately declared his unremitting faith in the battleship over aircraft, urged Congress to steam ahead with battleship construction. But Secretary Edison had announced last fortnight that aircraft had a "temporary advantage over ships," had said the Navy would have to revise its ship designs. Last week Mr. Edison did a neat straddle. Said he: ". . . Battleships were, are and will be for many years the backbone of our first line of national defense. . . . Apparently . . . the topsides of battleships may be damaged by aerial bombs. ... A fleet is at a very great handicap unless it has proper air support."

The committee then approved a bill authorizing $655,000,000 for the Navy, including funds to modernize guns on three old battleships.

Army officers have repeatedly assured Congress that their new Garand rifle is the best anywhere (TIME, May 6). Nevertheless, the Senate's military appropriations chairman Elmer Thomas had to be shown. If doubting Thomas was naive enough to expect the War Department to endanger its $15,000,000 investment in Garands, he was soon disillusioned. Reluctantly, under conditions which prohibited any positive test, the Army last week pitted six Garands (fired in relays so that no single gun took the gaff) against two of Melvyn Maynard Johnson Jr.'s rival semiautomatics.

On 300-yard targets at Ft. Belvoir, Va., Johnsons first outshot Garands in accuracy 404-393), then were outshot (348-405). The Garand seemed to stand up well under 150 rapid-fire rounds, was reasonably accurate. The Johnson was slightly more accurate at 600 yards, slightly slower in firing.

Star marksman of the day: Minnesota's 61-year-old Senator Ernest Lundeen, formerly a captain in the Army reserve. Sedate in high-top shoes, he fired 16 successive bull's-eyes (at 300 yards) with the Garand, eleven with the Johnson. Said Elmer Thomas, doubts gone after four hours amid the gunpowder, dogwood and violets at Ft. Belvoir: ". . . Both mighty fine guns. ... no reason to go into production on a second good gun." No man to cease firing, Melvyn Johnson will undoubtedly be heard from again.

Last man on Capitol Hill to harbor a suspicion against the Navy is Chairman Carl Vinson of the House Naval Affairs Committee. Last week Carl Vinson astounded his colleagues by announcing that the committee will investigate the Navy's ship-&-plane construction programs. Object: to determine whether the U. S. is getting its naval money's worth.

One expert who doubts that the Army and Navy have shown good air sense is Major Al Williams. A famed military speed pilot turned columnist, he thinks that the U. S. stupidly got off the right track in aircraft engine design 17 years ago. It was then that the Army and Navy abandoned development of streamlined, liquid-cooled engines and turned to blunt, air-cooled radials (because radials seemed to promise more horsepower per pound). Last week Al Williams told his story in pictures (see cut}: 1) a Curtiss racer with which he set a speed record (266 m.p.h.) in 1923; 2) a retouched version of the same picture, showing how near the 1923 Curtiss was to a low-winged speedster of today; 3) a 1940 Army Airacobra, powered by a streamlined, liquid-cooled Allison engine.

Critic Williams' point: that with better judgment, the U. S. might be 17 years ahead of where it is today.

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