Truman v. Knox

The Truman Committee had the last word. Big, bluff Navy Secretary Frank Knox, who had blustered that the committee's figures on shipping losses were "very seriously off," conceded last week that the committee's figures were approximately correct.

In the first real attempt to tell the score in the fog-shrouded Battle of the Atlantic, the committee had revealed this shocking fact: 1,000,000 deadweight tons of shipping were sent to the bottom monthly in '42, the losses outweighing new U.S. and British construction. Knox's tart retort that the committee's figures were compiled from "unauthorized and uninformed sources" was reassuring to the nation.

But Committeeman Ralph O. Brewster, Senator from Maine, was not reassured.

In a desk-thumping session with Knox he bluntly declared the committee's figures were true, "and you know it. We will want to ask you some questions."

Knox knew it was time to reef. In a carefully worded statement issued by the Navy, he gulped his previous words, took a new tack: "There is no great difference in the Navy and the committee figures for 1942, the net loss in gross tons being in the neighborhood of something over a million tons."

Landlubbers were reassured again. Put that way, the loss did not sound nearly as bad as the 12,000,000 deadweight tons trumpeted by the Truman Committee. But old salts were troubled. Why was the net loss given in gross tons when the U.S. Maritime Commission computes new ship construction in deadweight tonnage?* Was the Navy totting up ship construction in deadweight tons, totting up losses in gross tons, thus netting a fictitious bookkeeping profit on every deal? Or was gross tonnage chosen because sinkings could be represented by a smaller figure? Knox was silent.

Three days later the Secretary announced sinkings in April were much lower than in March. But he hastily warned that "too much significance" should not be attached to this. Thus the fog was kept draped over the Atlantic and the anxious citizens.

*Dead-weight tonnage is the carrying capacity of a vessel in long tons (2,240 lb.). Gross tonnage is the entire internal cubic capacity of a vessel, with each 100 cubic feet calculated to represent one ton. While it is difficult to compare the two measurements, gross tonnage is usually computed as roughly one-third less than deadweight tonnage, e.g., Liberty ships have a dead weight of 10,800 tons, gross weight of 7,100 tons.

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