Indictment of the Navy

Three American outposts--the Panama Canal, Australia and Pearl Harbor--are in grave danger because of Army and Navy bickering for control of air power.

Thus argues Colonel Hugh J. Knerr, retired, onetime G.H.Q. Army Air Force chief of staff, onetime Navy officer, in the June issue of American Mercury.

Colonel Knerr places partial blame on the "old guard in the Army," but the full force of his attack falls on the Navy command: "The average 60-year-old admiral contemplates the tortures of hell a lot more cheerfully than he contemplates being commanded by an Army general."

The Canal. "Much was made of the announcement that . . . Lieut. General Frank M. Andrews, who is perhaps our ablest exponent of air power, was given 'full responsibility' for the defense of the Panama Canal," writes Colonel Knerr. But "the Navy began trimming his wings. . . . The area around the Windward Islands . . . [ is ] obviously . . . [ an ] area that anyone responsible for the defense of the Canal would like to know is being patrolled most carefully. But General Andrews . . . has no authority to direct the patrolling. [ He ] supplies the heavy bombers . . . but they can't leave the ground . . . until directed to do so by an admiral who shares the Navy sentiment that "Army aviation should stop at the shore line.' " On the Canal's western approaches, says Colonel Knerr, the Navy has "at times even refused to give General Andrews information essential for his defensive plans."

Australia is in equal danger, writes Colonel Knerr, because the New Zealand sector has been taken away from General MacArthur. "[General MacArthur is in] 'supreme command,' . . . but actually is dependent on a naval man who doesn't take orders from him in a vital portion of his area."

Pearl Harbor is "a bloody monument to divided responsibility," says Colonel Knerr. But even now it is under a "threeway split command between Admiral Nimitz, the Navy district commander, and the Army airman Lieut. General Delos Emmons."

Simple solution to the political tug-of-war, says Colonel Knerr, is to give absolute authority to one man in each theater of war, have Congress establish a Department of National Defense.

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