Congress Asks Questions

The biggest Navy appropriation bill in history -- $32,647,134,336 -- was passed last week by the House of Representatives. The bill laid out more than three times as much as the whole New Deal Government in 1938, but the House approved it, 257-0. For war and for the peace the U.S. was committed to have and ta hold the greatest naval power on all the seven seas.

This monolithic fact is a basing point in all policy, foreign and domestic. Slowly the public, like Congress, is getting used to its vast outline: 3,200,000 men (with 400,000 more needed), 10,000,000 pro posed tons (five times the 1941 strength). Last week Congress released 1,182 pages of testimony full of the kind of intimate detail which helps to make the colossal Navy understandable. Items:

P: A radar set on a destroyer escort costs $28,750. Description of a new device called "loran" is still off-the-record.

P: Torpedo gyros are now plentiful, but ball bearings are a bottleneck for the entire naval ordnance program.

P: Battle damage to its ships cost the Navy only an estimated $1 2,000,000 during the first half of fiscal 1944, but "other heavy cases" have come in since Jan. 1. Twelve-month estimate: $100,000,000.

P: Next year $4,500 will be spent for sailors' medals and Navy Es.

P: A single 16-in. armor-piercing shell fired from a battleship costs $1,252.

P: The "hardest single thing" facing Navy doctors today is filariasis, a mosquito-borne disease which sometimes develops into elephantiasis, particularly of the scrotum. Already returned to the U.S. are 3,000 South Seas filariasis cases, mostly marines.

P: The Marshalls operation required some 1,500,000 barrels of ships' fuel. On Kwajalein one night twelve Jap planes got through, bombed a "particularly explosive target." Damage: $2,500,000.

The Big Parade. The Congressman's one best chance to peek into the workings of the powerful little group that runs the Navy comes when the admirals seek funds. In wartime Congress invariably writes this group a blank check, and so the lean, bald top dog, Admiral Ernest J. King, conceded, while contending that the money is spent carefully ("I'm a taxpayer, too"). But at committee hearings the people's representatives can give the admirals some uneasy moments.

One of these moments came when Vermont's Representative Charles A. Plumley found an item of $7,000,000 to build a stadium at Annapolis. That did not seem to Mr. Plumley to be essential to the war. Ernie King's deputy, Vice Admiral Frederick J. Home (not the least of whose qualifications is his ability to get along with Congress) quickly admitted that the item should not have been put in the bill. "The bureau chiefs are here, and I think you are going to give them a bad quarter of an hour," said wry Admiral Home.

For Mississippi's Jamie Whitten that dodge was not enough to excuse plushy requests for appropriations. Said he: "We just had Admiral King in here, and Admiral King says: 'I have to pass it right back to Admiral Home'; now we have Admiral Home here and he says 'I have to depend on the bureau chiefs,' and then the bureau chief says 'I have to depend on the men under me,' and it goes right down to the fellow who is at the [Naval] Academy and wanted the stadium." Out went the stadium. Declared Jamie Whitten: "It takes a mighty small item to make you suspicious of the big items."

The Pessimists. When asking for money the admirals are almost invariably doleful about the war's progress. Plumley's observation that half his mail protested the spending of so much money for what Army and Navy men sometimes call this "soon-to-be-ended war," prompted Vice Admiral Ben Moreell, burly, able chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, to answer soberly: "I do not believe you will find any responsible military man who will agree with the thesis that we can now see the end of the war."

Said Admiral King: "We still have a very long way to go to win the war in the Pacific. ... I think there is a great deal of over-optimism."* Said Admiral Home: the appropriation estimates had taken into account a possible ending of the European war this year, but "I would like to interpolate there that I do not believe it."

The Aloof. Of perennial concern to many Congressmen is the apparent refusal of the Army and Navy to cooperate.

Why, the Appropriations Subcommittee asked, couldn't the Army and Navy get together to save some money? The Army was abandoning (partially or wholly) some 46 airfields or air facilities because Army Air Forces were undergoing a 20-30% training cut. Why couldn't the still-expanding Navy air arm use some of these facilities instead of building still others of its own? (Whitten: "We have just one country to foot the bill.")

This served to point a finger at Ernie King's old-line left-hand man, Vice Admiral John S. McCain, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air), who now has nearly 750,000 airmen serving under him. Said he: the Navy had to tram near the coast, but the Army's "abandoned" airfields were nearly all inland; the Army would let them to the Navy only temporarily. The Committee accepted his explanation, with reservations.

The Power. The Congressmen seemed to understand that mistakes would be made in handling such astronomical sums of money. But behind their questioning lay a suspicion, deeply rooted in the civilian U.S., which was emerging slowly but surely as World War II developed. Was the professional military reaching for too much power, grabbing money while the grabbing is good? Item: to some members $500,000,000 more seemed too steep for new shore-based Navy works within the U.S. when everything seemed to be moving overseas.

Finally, the Committee called in Under Secretary James V. Forrestal. He conceded that the Committee had brought up a sensible question, "human nature being what it is."

Then he patiently explained: "In time of war . . . you would rather be shot for having too much than not having enough. ... I know I reflect the Secretary's view ... we do not want to try to build permanent establishments for the Navy during wartime, taking advantage of wartime pressure."

Honest Jim Forrestal added the sobering note which assures any wartime appropriation: "The next four or five months . . . are about as critical months as I think the country will ever face in our lifetime ... we are a little ahead of schedule in the Pacific . . . this acceleration has meant a troop lift and a mounting of operations. . . . We cannot be very precise on assumptions. . . . We have to assume that things may not go well."

* Speaking publicly last Saturday his tone was brighter.

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