Invitation to Catastrophe

Senator Harry Truman took the Army and the Navy by the necks last week and knocked their heads together. While a committee of generals and admirals studied plans for a merger of the services, the man who may be vice president after the war told in an article in Collier's why he thought the merger should be a No. 1 postwar job.

Wrote Senator Truman: ". . . Our scrambled professional military setup has been an open invitation to catastrophe." As chairman of a special Senate committee, Senator Truman had studied the scramble at first hand. Thus he was able to recite a record of wrangling and over lapping of effort which, he said, had cost the nation millions of dollars, millions of wasted man-hours, had possibly endangered American lives. Some of the "countless instances" which have come within the Truman Committee's purview:

P: Lieut. General WalterC. Short's and Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimme's failure to coordinate their efforts was one of the things responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor. (Kimmel protested this week that Truman made "false statements concerning my conduct.")

P: A Douglas Navy plane was grounded in Kansas through loss of an aileron hinge. The Douglas plant, within easy flying distance, had plenty of hinges, but all were beinturned out under Army contract. The Navy plane had to wait ten days while it got its hinge through Philadelphia via Oakland, Calif.

P: "During the camp-construction program millions were spent for bulldozers, tractors, trucks, cranes, lumber, etc., the Army & Navy competing for this equipment." Their competition boosted the price of lumber more than $10 per thousand board feet, cost the nation $13,017,576.

P: "Other millions were squandered by duplications in the construction of bases." Although the Great Lakes Training Station might have accommodated both Army and Navy, "the Army rushed into Chicago and bought up hotels in a manner that can only be described as headlong."

P: Lieut. General Brehon Somervell authorized the Canol project without consulting the Navy (or any other department), spent $134,000,000 on it, used up some 200,000 tons of scarce material, wasted manpower and supplies when "four tankers . . . could have carried in one trip more 100-octane gasoline, motor gasoline and fuel oil than would be produced by the entire Canol project by Jan. 1, 1945. . . all because of a disintegrated military setup under which coordination cannot be compelled."

What did Senator Truman intend that the U.S. should do? For one thing he would start at the beginning with an exchange of students between the two service academies. For another thing, a General Staff (not Joint Chiefs of Staff) would sit at the right hand of a Secretary of War who would run both the services. Senator Truman recalled that this was the original U.S. idea: "A single War Department was created by Act of Congress on Aug. 7, 1789. Not until April 30, 1798 did the advocates of an independent Navy succeed in their effort," start a rivalry which flourished bitterly during the Spanish-American War and, masquerading as esprit de corps, reached its unhappy climax in the blunders and dereliction of Dec. 7, 1941.

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