Investigation No. 15

In 1931 a portly little publisher-politician from Georgia went about the country handing the Solid South to Franklin D. Roosevelt. His name was Clark Howell and his paper the Atlanta Constitution. In 1933 President Roosevelt offered Democrat Howell a fat diplomatic post which he declined on the ground he could serve party & nation better at home. Some of his friends said that the Constitution's publisher did not feel that his deflated pocketbook could afford the personal outlay required by such foreign service. Last week Mr. Howell changed his mind and decided to represent the U. S. abroad this summer, at Government expense.

Three weeks ago the telephone tinkled in the Howell home in Atlanta. The President of the U. S. was on the wire in Washington.

President Roosevelt: I am leaving tonight. I've called to tell you good-by and to ask you to do something for me.

Mr. Howell: I'll do anything I can.

President: I want you to act as chairman of this aviation commission I am appointing today.

Howell: What I don't know about aviation would fill a book.

President: I know that. That's why I want you to act. I want this problem solved from a business as well as from an expert standpoint.

Mr. Howell, aged 70 and thrice married, took the job. Vowed he: "When I get through I will know every damn thing about it."

Under the new Air Mail Act the President also appointed the following men to his aviation commission:

P: Commander Jerome Clarke Hunsaker, U. S. N. retired, aircraft designer (Shenandoah, NC-4), onetime chief of navy aircraft design, head of the department of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, onetime vice president of Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. (Akron, Macon).

P: Edward Pearson Warner, editor of Aviation, professor of aeronautical engineering at M. I. T., onetime (1926-29) Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics.

P: Albert Julius Berres, onetime American Federation of Laborite, secretary to the Producers' Committee of the Motion Picture Producers of America.

P: Franklin Knight Lane Jr., California lawyer, World War flyer, son of Wilson's Secretary of the Interior.

The commission had hardly been named before a howl of protest went up from Philadelphia's flag-waving Air Defense League. Snorted the League's president, Col. Samuel Price Wetherill: "The selfsame lobby which opposed the Administration's policy of cleaning house in connection with the airmail contracts has evidently succeeded in causing two members of the commission to be appointed . . . whose membership . . . promises ill for disinterested findings." The Air Defense League objected particularly to the past records of Members Warner and Hunsaker.

Nobody could positively object to the past record of Chairman Howell on aviation because he had none. All he knows about flying he learned as a passenger on occasional flights over commercial airlines. This lack of expert knowledge, however, did not prevent him from announcing, after his commission's meetings last week in the White House Cabinet Room, that he would junket through Europe next month to size up the power and progress of foreign flying.

Commander Hunsaker, a trained technical observer, is already in Europe. Nevertheless he was to arrive home this week and with Members Warner, Berres & Lane, board a Department of Commerce plane Aug. 3 for a month's tour of the U. S. to visit Army & Navy bases, inspect commercial airports and aircraft factories and look over airmail, passenger & express route.

From coast to coast and border to border, every region will be covered by the commissioners. A flight over the Caribbean airways will probably be included. The committee will reassemble in Washington Sept. 1 to begin public hearings.

Charged with studying all phases of U. S. Aviation and formulating a broad national policy covering air transportation and defense, the Howell Board must report to the next Congress by Feb. 1.

Each member, according to its chairman, will enter upon his work with a "virgin mind." Out of the $75,000 authorized by Congress for the inquiry commissioners will be paid at the rate of $9,500 a year, plus expenses.

The Howell investigation of U. S. Aviation is the 15th since the War. The industry first went under official examination in 1918 when the Hughes Board sought to determine the reason for alleged waste and delay in the construction of U. S. aircraft. Subsequent inquiries of note:

1) The Dickman Board in France (1919) reporting on lessons learned from the War.

2) The Menoher Board in Washington (1919), reporting on a bill to establish a U. S. Department of Aeronautics.

3) The Connor Board (1920) inquiring into the whole subject of military aviation.

4) The Lassiter Board (1923) investigating Army Air Service requirements of personnel and equipment.

5) The House investigation (1924-25) under Wisconsin's Representative Lampert at which General William Mitchell made headlines for weeks by flaying the backwardness of Army & Navy aviation.

6) The Morrow Board which grew out of the Mitchell testimony and resulted in major recommendations for changes in the flying arms of the Army and Navy. Chief among these was the five-year building program for each service.

7) The House investigation (1933) of the Navy's loss of the Akron.

8) The Senate investigation (1933-34) under Alabama's Black which resulted in wholesale cancellation of airmail contracts.

9) The House inquiry into Army aircraft procurement methods which resulted in a demand for the ouster of Air Corps Chief Benjamin D. ("Benny"') Foulois.

10) The House investigation of Navy aircraft purchases, which resulted in a virtual whitewash.

11) The secret study by Newton Diehl Baker's board of the Army Air Corps and its shortcomings in flying the mail. Last week the Baker Committee finally approved its report, held it for publication this week.

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